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News — 05 July, 2011

HOT in Sumbawa Island, Indonesia

 

Sumbawa Island, Indonesia

This post is related with Kate's last post about Hot in Indonesia. On June 30th until July 1st, we went to an island called Sumbawa Island (West Nusa Tenggara Province) to provide a day and a half workshop about OpenStreetMap and its tools for Australian Community Development and Civil Society Strengthening Scheme (ACCESS). There were 16 participants came from Dompu district and Bima district/town. The workshop was held in Mutmainah Hotel in Bima town.

ctually, we were arrived on June 29th with Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction (AIFDR) team (Vania Budianto and Kristy van Putten) in the afternoon, then we headed to ACCESS Office in Bima to introduce ourselves and trying to get to know each other.

 

Meet up with ACCESS member from Bima and Dompu in ACCESS Office

And after that, we were going around for sightseeing and trying to know a little bit about the town. Basically, Bima is quite a peaceful and small town (population from 2010's census: 142,443). The town was formed in April 10th, 2002. There's not too many attractions in the town but there's a mayor office in the middle of the city which is inspired from The White House design in Washington DC (but it's not white, it's in green color). What characteristics that makes Bima special are: special fabric for Batik, wild horse milk (many local trust that it's very good for man's fitness), and horse cart transportation called 'Ben Hur'.

Anyway, on the first day of training, the participants were very excited! One reason was they knew the 'bule' (a term for an expat or foreigner in Indonesia) will teach them. Most of them don't understand English (that's why myself and Vasanthi were here), but the training went well. There were many questions and feedback related to OpenStreetMap and its tools, most of them asked about the presets because they want to make a map based on their own issue such as poverty, health facility, pregnant woman, etc. We will be working on ways to link the issue data to OpenStreetMap.  Some of them also want OpenStreetMap and tools like Java OpenStreetMap are translated in Bahasa Indonesia (which myself and Vasanthi are still working on it).

On the second day, we discussed about the follow-up plan, what they would going to do after the workshop and what the output is. Each district will create a map and that map will be presented in the front of their local government. And they also want to create their own handout guide to spread OpenStreetMap and its tools for their friends and colleagues. I encourage all of us to support them and make that happen! :)

Moreover, keep in touch with me, I'll update more stories related with Hot in Indonesia.