Close
    Search for HOT projects, news, people and jobs.
News — 10 July, 2011

HOT in Lombok, Indonesia

 

Lombok Island, Indonesia

June 30th - July 1st 2011 we were in Sumbawa Island helping the  Australian Community Development and Civil Society Strengthening Scheme (ACCESS). And July 4th - July 5th, we were in Lombok Island! But, unfortunately, we had to split up because Kate and Vasanthi had to do workshop in University of Gadjah Mada (UGM), Yogyakarta. So, at the moment, there were myself and Jeff in Lombok, teaching OpenStreetMap to 16 participant in Lombok Garden Hotel, Mataram.

Lombok Island is next to Bali Island. It's very well known because many tourist come here for surfing and diving in Gili Island or take a walk in Senggigi Beach. There's also turtle conservation in Senggigi Beach (rght in front of Sheraton Hotel) where you can help prevent the turtles from going extinct by donating.

 

Senggigi Beach

 

Turtle Conservation

The workshop went a little bit slower than what we've already done in Sumbawa Island. No wonder, there were only two facilitators! Oh and the ACCESS team gave us fancy meeting room which made me nervous (I don't like when everything goes too formal :) ). It was really hard to keep everyone focused on the workshop because most of them are not familiar with computers. I remember when I had to help a participant who had a trouble with her wireless driver, or setting a connection trough 3G dongle, meanwhile Jeff asked me to interpret his explanation in Indonesia. That's why I was a little bit cranky.

On the second day where everyone discussed about follow-up plan, I'm really impressed by their respond and spirit for mapping whole Lombok. They also discussed about GPS unit, ACCESS team in Lombok are more interested using GPS for collecting data. They were also hoping that we can go back to Lombok and creating a workshop in bigger scale with all tools that already translated into Indonesian language.

 

HOT with ACCESS Lombok Team

Conclusion, even there were only two of us, I'm really grateful that we can do our best. These wonderful people deserved it and we must support all of them :)