Projects are listed by award date. Alternatively, list projects by title.
Eliminate Exploitive Child Labor through Education and Economic Development (EXCEED)
Child labor is a prominent issue in Indonesia that affects children's educational attainment and their physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. Studies in Indonesia have shown that child labor is particularly exploitive in the areas of commercial sex work, domestic service, agricultural work (including palm oil plantations), and in the context of street children. Child labor is mainly caused by poverty, limited economic resources, and few good employment opportunities for adults. Children of poor families, often unable to access quality education, are some of the most likely to drop out of school and enter the workforce at a young age.
World Education is partnering with Save the Children Federation in a four-year U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) funded project to provide quality education and training in Indonesia that will help remove 6,000 children from exploitive child labor, and protect another 4,800 children who are at-risk. World Education supports life skills education for former child laborers and supports research and monitoring of child labor for the project, which is called Eliminate Exploitive Child Labor Through Education and Economic Development (EXCEED).
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Reducing Pressure on the Lesan Protected Forest in Indonesia
The Lesan Protected Forest in East Kalimantan, Indonesia provides refuge for approximately 2,500 orangutans. It is under pressure from large logging concessions, oil palm plantations and agricultural development by local communities. In this project World Education works with community members in two of the villages nearest the Protected Forest Area to alleviate pressure on this area, adjacent conservation forests, and other areas presently open for conversion to oil palm plantations. This is accomplished by enabling target communities to increase their incomes from improved agriculture, agro-forestry and sustainable forest-based activities. The project provides education and training in land use planning, conservation, and environmental protection. Agricultural development services will also be provided so that local communities can reduce the need to develop new lands for agricultural use or to lease land to oil palm plantation operators in sensitive forest areas.
The project benefits the orangutans and other wildlife in the Lesan Protected Forest Area as well as the local communities which will have increased their income generation capacity and gained a better understanding of environmental and conservation issues.
On this project World Education collaborates with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), local community-based organizations, and the local government to safeguard this very important area of biological diversity.
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Managing a Multifunctional Landscape for Orangutan Conservation in East Kalimantan Indonesia (2008-2009)
The forested area bordering Berau and East Kutai Districts in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, is one of the few remaining areas on either Sumatra or Borneo that still contains substantial expanses of relatively undisturbed lowland forest. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has counted more than 10,000 orangutan nests in the area and delineated two forest areas in the Kelay and Lesan watersheds that provide refuge for approximately 3,000 orangutans, which makes it one of the three largest known populations in the world.
Since 2001 TNC and World Education activities have advanced the process of safeguarding 50,000 ha of critical orangutan habitat in the Berau and East Kutai. Local management councils and technical units have been set up in both areas to combat future threats, and local community dependency on forest and forest products has been reduced through the development of sustainable farming systems.
Unfortunately large areas of conversion forest have already been approved for oil palm establishment by the local government, and clear felling is actively taking place. Oil palm and other plantations, as well as coal mining, are necessary parts of the economic development of the province. But integrated spatial planning and collaborative management is urgently required to ensure that development does not destroy the habitat necessary for the conservation of orangutan.
The aim of this project is to minimize the loss of orangutan habitat in a large, contiguous multiple-use forest area in the Kelay-Lesan area in Breau and the Wehea Area in Kutai Timur in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. This project provides an opportunity to tackle the issue of orangutan habitat erosion at its root, through efforts to improve forest governance, spatial planning, law enforcement and the provision of incentives to encourage responsible practice by the private sector as well as income generation activities and capacity building for the local communities.
In collaboration with TNC, World Education works primary with local communities to enhance their roles in natural resource management and to increase their income through sustainable agriculture. The Nature Conservancy works on the development of collaborative management approaches with private sector entities, such as oil palm plantations, logging and mining companies. This habitat protection through co-management and multi-purpose use at the district and provincial is backed up at national level. This will be achieved through lobbying the Indonesia government to address the conservation of orangutans that occur outside the protected area network and also to give formal protection not just to the orangutan but also to the habitats.
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Orangutan Habitat Protection in Tanjung Puting National Park
Tanjung Puting National Park (TPNP) is home to one of the two largest remaining orangutan populations (around 6,000) in the world. Given its formally protected status as a national park, as well as the high profile of the park and its orangutans, prospects for long-term viability of the orangutan population would seem promising. TPNP, however, is still besieged by numerous and persistent threats.
Proposed changes to the park boundaries and proposed changes in land use classifications of the land surrounding TPNP combine to bring about a 447 km reduction in park areas. In order to prevent and mitigate these threats, World Education and Orangutan Foundation International have combined efforts to apply an integrated conservation and development approach to protecting the Park and its orangutan population.
This project is a continuation of the joint efforts that World Education and Orangutan Foundation International have undertaken in and around the TPNP since year 2003.
World Education continues to help strengthen local organizations to balance village economic planning and activities with conversation concerns through farmer field schools, developing village level planning processes, and facilitating the development and implementation of village natural resource management regulations. World Education works with farmer groups to provide them alternative income generation opportunities as well as improve irrigation and water management, and overall stewardship of the natural resources that their livelihoods depend upon.
The beneficiaries of the project include the 6,000 orangutans and other species of TPNP, as well as 3,000 people who live in the seven villages that abut TPNP. Thousands of others in nearby communities all reap benefits from the improved ecological services of the TPNP. Many other stakeholders at district and provincial levels also benefit from the projects activities.
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Decentralization of Basic Education Management and Governance
Following decades of highly-centralized governance and administration, Indonesia is in the midst of implementing an extensive program of decentralization of its education sector, aimed at transferring control, ownership, financial and management responsibilities from the national government to province, district, and community-level institutions and school. As shown in other countries, increased community participation in education leads to more community ownership, voice and involvement, enhanced accountability of service providers, increased relevance of education, and ultimately -- improved quality of education.
The Decentralized Basic Education: Management and Governance Project (DBE1) USAID-funded project was launched in 2005 to assist provincial, district and local school governance institutions to develop a more effective decentralized education management and governance systems for primary schools in six provinces of Indonesia.
World Education, which is a partner to RTI and local NGOs on this project, is working to enhance the capacity of local school committees, district-level institutions, and civil society organizations to effectively engage in local school governance and management activities. The World Education team is developing resource materials and training programs for school committees and other local organizations and also works with project staff on enhancing the use of participatory methods in various project activities.
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Orangutan Habitat Conservation II
(2005 - 2007)
On the southern tip of Indonesian Borneo lies the Tanjung Puting National Park (TPNP), home to biologically diverse, lowland forests that are habitat to globally important and threatened orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) populations. TPNP faces numerous threats to the survival of its orangutan population, including the unsustainable harvest of resources by poor farming communities who lack other options. This project provides farming communities with training and technical assistance to develop more productive and ecologically sound agriculture and agroforestry systems. The goal is to develop farmers' livelihoods in order to reduce pressure on forests in the TPNP.
Funded by USAID/Indonesia, this project uses an integrated conservation and development approach that combines livelihood development with community participation in protecting TPNP. World Education leads season-long training courses where farmers learn to experiment and pioneer new cultivation techniques in their own fields. Through these activities, farmers learn how to improve their agricultural practices and how to establish sustainable agroforestry systems, as well as develop livestock. A subcontractor to this project, Orangutan Foundation International (www.orangutan.org), recruits and trains communities to protect park resources, and provides technical assistance to TPNP's planning and management.
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Farmer Learning and Environmental Stewardship in Indonesia
(2002 - 2006)
Indonesia is home to some of the most biologically diverse and expansive tropical forests remaining in the world. These forests and the wildlife that inhabitant them face numerous threats to their survival, including the unsustainable harvest of resources by poor farming communities who lack other options. This project provides farming communities with training and technical assistance to develop more productive and ecologically sound agriculture and agroforestry systems. The goal is to develop farmers' livelihoods in order to reduce pressure on forests in the Kelay River watershed. These forests are habitat to globally important and threatened orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) populations.
This project engages farmers in season-long training courses where farmers learn to experiment and pioneer new cultivation techniques in their own fields. Through these activities, farmers learn how to improve their agricultural practices and learn how to establish sustainable agroforestry systems, as well as develop livestock. This project will continue through 2005 and is funded by USAID/Indonesia.
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Indonesia Learning Farm
( - 2007)
In Indonesia, poor, vulnerable youth have been deeply affected by the country's economic crises and lack both education and economic opportunities. Many feel hopeless at a time when they should be optimistic about the future. Lacking education, skills, or support, they are at risk of being trapped in a cycle of poverty and never realizing their full potential.
The Learning Farm seeks to address the lack of skills, opportunities and hope amongst vulnerable Indonesian youth by providing entrepreneurial and life skills training in the context of an operational organic farm. Located in Puncak, West Java, the Learning Farm provides Indonesian youth with the tools and skills needed to live healthy and productive lives and become change agents within their own communities.
The Learning Farm is a community where vulnerable youth can find opportunity and support; an educational center where these youth can obtain practical skills and knowledge; a productive organic farm as the primary educational medium; a social enterprise where youth apply their new skills to benefit themselves and support the sustainability of the Learning Farm; and a networking center where experience and lessons learnt are shared with other organizations working with vulnerable youth as well as with the community at large.
The farm serves as both an educational center and an organic farm, where students take responsibility for tasks related to running the farm and participate in structured learning activities that utilize a "learning by doing" approach. The farm's curriculum includes basic literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills, organic farming, enterprise development, health, life skills, computers, and English. Using environmentally-sound growing methods, the youth work in teams to produce organic vegetables for their own consumption and also for sale. Most importantly, the farm has become a community where young people feel welcome, work directly with supportive adults, and have a chance to focus their energy and intelligence on building meaningful skills and relationships that will help them over the course of their lives.
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