The Jungle Library Project Needs Your Support
Since graduating with a degree in Aquaculture at the University of Diponegoro, Pungky Nanda Pratama has given his life to conservation. His home – Indonesia – is a paradise of mega biodiversity but sadly it is changing.
Logging, poaching and plantations are tearing at the green heart of this tropical archipelago in remote South Sumatra. Even inside the national parks, where virgin rainforests once flourished, wild animals are wrenched into the illegal pet trade, or – worse – killed on illegal plantations as ‘pests’.
Faced with higher and higher living costs for education, motorbikes and electricity, indigenous people who live on the border of some of Indonesia’s last green wildernesses are increasingly forced to cut, traffic and sell their natural wealth.
When children grow up with this, it becomes the norm.
Since early 2016 Pungky has been living on the border zone outside the Kerinci Seblat National Park, in a tiny village in Musi Rawas regency, South Sumatra province.
Through an environmental education syllabus, he teaches primary school students about species identification, ecosystem function and environmental destruction. The aim is for the future generation to choose sustainable career paths that do not endanger their very lives through landslides, flooding, food shortages, forest fires and devastating drops in the water table.
The results of his program may seem small, but they inspire him to keep going every single day.
Stories from students about how they removed a snake slithering into their home by using a broom, rather than killing it or how they released an animal captured on their family plantation back into the wild make it all seem worth it. Sometimes they tell Pungky of their courage in forbidding their parents to traffic wild animals, or tell fishermen not to use chemicals or go electrofishing.
The Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Agency of South Sumatra (NBCASS) and the head of the Conservation Agency of Kerinci Seblat National Park support Pungky’s work and he has been invited to talk at major events in the region.
Unfortunately, funding is hard to come by in Indonesia, and since October has been cut for his education programme.
Starting in January 2018 the NBCASS want Pungky to teach in three new primary schools, and even in other provinces if successful. His daily travels can take up to seven hours with no motorbike and no resources to do his work.
The Junglelibrary Project is Pungky’s educational program through which he is raising funds to continue his work in South Sumatra.
The fundraiser will help him continue hi programme for sixth months, from January to June 2018 – the time it takes for a class to complete the syllabus.
Support The Jungle Library Project’s Go Fund Me page https://www.gofundme.com/environmental-education-in-sumatra
Like and follow the facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/thejunglelibraryproject/.
100% of the funds will go directly to environmental education and the conservation of the natural world.
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Cost breakdown:
– 1,000 motorbike
– 1,800 transport, fuel, food, accomodation
– 1,000 laptop and teaching materials
– 700 camera
– 1,000 flights/trips between provinces for meetings / workshops / events
– Extra funds will support Pungky’s rescued orchid nursery.
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Video filmed by Pungky Nanda Pratama’s helpers, produced by Joshua Parfitt. Music by Blue Room.