Baby apple tree in Gunung Leuser National Park

This is a picture of tree that Apple has planted in July 2010. it is growing so well and we already put a sign with his name.

by Panut

Thank you Panut. Thank you OIC. For giving me a chance to link my heart and soul to the rainforest restored at OIC's replanting site of Gunung Leuser National Park, Indonesia.

by Apple

Do Something, Even a Bit

Do something, even a bit. It will become a snow ball, bigger, bigger and bigger. Morakot Typhoon and Aceh Tsunami teach us the way to collaborate all the abilities in a global movement on disaster management. Important lesson for today is how to implement a lot of activities through respect, unity, interest and enthusiasm.

CMCU was implement the activity on disaster relief for help the community who affected by Typhoon in 2009. The activity including: organic farming, building reconstruction, trauma healing and providing information technology. The activities were supported by local artists, independent news reporter and others.

Anyway, the local community is an important part of disaster management, event they affected by disaster. As an example, Bunun People in Taoyuan Indigenous Township help by them self and input more effort to save their self. They work closely with CMCU to develop a better live before and after Typhoon.

Besides, the media workers also important to do their work to report every disaster condition for all people in the world. They done big effort to let us know, to increase our capacity and to make us connected each other. Media reporting could be a part of disaster adaptation and mitigation.

In Indonesia, Air Putih Foundation was providing internet connection and information technology in Banda Aceh. After a major earthquake and tsunami in 2004, they came to Banda Aceh to do something different than a relief program. Information technology became integrated part of human being in the world for years. It will be help people to support the other people even separate by time and location.

Disaster adaptation and mitigation are long term activity. It needs a lot of thing to do such as environmental restoration, public awareness, campaign and also policy advocacy. Orangutan Information Center (OIC) held ecosystem restoration in Gunung Leuser National Park to protect the Sumatran orangutan (pongo abelii). Protecting them means protect their habitat, it also mean protect human being from ecological disaster.

Typhoon Morakok and CMCU workshop became an important part of NGO leader forum in Taiwan. Sharing experience is a one way to improve the capacity; also it will give a productive input to develop a collaborative action on disaster management.

Speakers from, both Taiwan and Indonesia share their experiences base on their real activity and expertise. One day workshop was held in September 23, 2010 in Chi Shan Culture Center, Kaohsiung County, attended more than 30 people.

Next challenges to disaster adaptation and mitigation are including: How to engage all parties support to the action? Also how to engage the local community to implement the activities base on their local knowledge and cultures? How to develop more creative activities with long term affected? How to develop a better public policy addressed to environmental restoration and public participation on disaster management? And how to engage global community to do something (even little bit) for global movement on disaster management? Base on the workshop, it still needs us to do something. And then, what will you going to do? Just share in this forum, please put your opinion and start your action.

The speakers:

1. Bay Shu (CMCU)
2. Savi (Bunun People)
3. Niny Kung (Indigenous People Action Coalition of Taiwan – IPACT)
4. Okta Setiawan (Air Putih Foundation)
5. Panut Hadisiwoyo (OIC)
6. Fey Feng (Independent News)
7. Munch Kuo (Public TV-Reporter)
8. Chung Shin-Shiung (Reporter)

Moderators:

1. Andrew Lim (CMCU)
2. Istanda Ibu Zuzui (CMCU)
3. Apple Jia (Bamboo Community University Alliance – BCUA)
4. Wang Min-Chou (CMCU)

Interpreters:

1. Da-You Lin (CMCU)
2. Liou, Yi-Zih (CMCU)

Typhoon Morakok Relief Workshop Thu 23,Sep

1.Chi-Mei Community University’s efforts for the relief and rehabilitation of Typhoon Morakok 2009

2.After Typhoon Morakok 2009, the situation of aboriginal people in Tao-Yuan Township

3. Gunung Leuser National Park Rehabilitation Programme - community-based replanting and reforestation efforts in Sumatra

4. AirPutih / White Water - an NGO established for the relief and rehabilitation of the Aceh Tsunami 2004

CMCU Workshop Tue 21,Sep

1.A community university in a rural area: the experience ofChi-Mei Community University.

2.Build up the link between the rural area and the urban area: the community universities’ efforts.

3.The farmer's schools inSumatra for sustainable watershed livelihood development through agroforestry and agriculture.

4.Open source technologies for education, human capacity building and rural development in Belize andTaiwan.

ICOS10 Day 2: Bridging the Digital Divide with Open Source: Linux Implementation for Development for Rainforest Children in North Sumatra

The implementation of Open Source is through the Conservation & Digital Opportunity Centre (CDOC), a Project aims to provide capacity building services such as computer training, ICT training, public library and free Internet access to the communities and tourists in Bukit Lawang and Tangkahan, well known ecotourism and conservation areas around Gunung Leuser National Park in North Sumatra, Indonesia.

Why the CDOC using Open Source?

• Most of PC's and Laptops used in Indonesia identified using pirated software and we are responsible to stop the tradition.
• Most of People on the target area of CDOC Project never use computer and when we come and introduced Linux Ubuntu, they can learn to use it very well... (Maybe the condition would be different if they already know about Windows before)
• It's free and regularly updated by the community (user). What would be better than free software with worldwide support?
• No Viruses?

CDOC not Only for Children

• Actually CDOC project managed for all age of people in the communities, but we focused on Children because they had more consistency in the training class and they can receive the learning material very well...
• In the future, the Children hopefully can reduce the gap of digital knowledge between the people in the cities and them who lived in the village

CDOC not Only About Digital

• CDOC also raise the awareness for conservation and ecotourism to the community and visitors especially about the Sumatran Orangutan and Gunung Leuser National Park
• We also serve the students and community with other information by providing mobile library and mini library

CDOC activities in Slideshow:

For more information about CDOC You can visit: Orangutan Centre and CDOC - OIC project page (still on development).

ICOS10 NGO Track Day 2 Presentations

Workshops for the NGO track started off with a series of presentations titled "Mapping our communities: GIS for social-cultural and environmental actions." Although the morning session was slated to be presented in Chinese, Professor Lin and Professor Huang assisted in translating presentation to English for the international participants present at the even.

The first presentation "More Thank Biking: bikers GeoWeb 2.0" was conducted by Chong-Wey Lin, Professor of Department of Communication and Technology, NCTU. Professor Lin explained the complexities of launching a website, where questions like "who will use it?" and "what will the use it for?" must be raised. The needs of the users must be understood. Problems lead to opportunity and solutions, when a human centric design is utilized and user participation is encouraged. Living Labs and Open innovation played a pivotal role in the launching of the site. The GeoWeb 2.0 site was launched as has been a success with over 8,000 registered users. Professor Lin went on to demonstrate the very impressive features of the site.

The second topic was PPGIS initiative presented by Shen-Tzay Huang, Professor of Department of Management Information Systems, NPUST. This talk showed that technology is not enough if it is not centered around the user. The Technology Acceptance Model was utilized to show that if people do not perceive technology to be useful or easy to use it will not be used. Users must be satisfied that the technology will provide a benefit that exceeds the cost of learning the technology.

The series continued in English with an international presenter from Indonesia, Mr. Syafrizaldi Aal, Board member of Sumatra Sustainable Support (SSS) presenting a talk on Watershed Management in Sumatra. Mr. Aal gave an overview of the current situation in Sumatra and the importance of involving all stake holders in the management of watersheds.

Mr. Mulyadi second international speaker from Indonesia continued with a presentation on the Orangutan Information Center, showing how ICT can be used in environmental protection.

Day 2 Afternoon

The afternoon commenced with the World Cafe Plenary where international and Taiwanese participants interacted in small groups focusing on how to best answer the following question: "Embracing open source: how do I attract my friends and colleagues to try Linux."

The conclusion of the day was an inspirational talk by Indonesian students Taufig Muhammad Isa and Laina Farsiah on the topic of Bridging the digital divide with open source: true stories of Linux implementation for development. The speaker are students from Aceh, the epicenter of the Tsunami disaster in Sumatra, who has spend a 2 month internship at Academia Sinica learning how to implement open source solutions for development. The presentation gave a background of Sumatra and the disaster. They talked about Taiwan's involvement in the rescue efforts.

Promoting Sumatran Orangutan and Rainforest Conservation through the Introduction of Open Source Information Technologies

Greetings,

Due to unlucky weather condition in Kaohsiung, the presentation session of ICOS 2010 on 19 September was canceled and my presentation on OIC's case study about developing open source for rainforest protection unfortunately had to be canceled. However, as I had prepared a paper detailing the development of our open source project in Sumatra, I put the summary and the link to my paper in this blog, to allow you to explore our development. I welcome any suggestions and feedbacks for the better development of our open source and conservation endeavor. If you have further questions, please feel free to send your questions to my following emails: panut@orangutancentre.org.

Best Wishes,

Panut Hadisiswoyo

Founding Director of Orangutan Information Centre

Sumatera, Indonesia

www.orangutancentre.org

Promoting Sumatran Orangutan and Rainforest Conservation through the Introduction of Open Source Information Technologies

By Panut Hadisiswoyo, David Dellatore, and Mulyadi

ABSTRACT

A framework for open source based collaborative conservation and a digital centre has been established in Sumatra, Indonesia. This pioneer project called the Conservation and Digital Opportunity Centre (CDOC) has been implemented by the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC) as an environmental awareness raising approach by utilising open source technology as the main available resource for capacity building in the community. The CDOC has been developed in such a way that it provides substantial and valuable digital and learning services for the local community and thus empowers local conservationists to broaden the scope of conservation works to improve community livelihoods such as ecotourism and the conservation of Sumatran orangutans and other wildlife in the rainforests of Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra. However, the CDOC was developed using an ad hoc approach and thus improvements of open source technology and educational and learning resources as well as long term partnership with various organisations are required to sustain the CDOC services.

KEY WORDS: open source, digital, community education, environmental awareness, sumatran orangutan, Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra.

For complete paper, please click the following link:

ICOS10 Day 1

ICOS10 Opening Day

Today, September 17th, 2010 marked the 10th annual International Conference on Open Source (ICOS) opening ceremony for its distinguished invited guests from various sectors of the FOSS community. The NGO Track for development began with a presentation on Open Source Dissemination Strategies for Belize and Central America moderated by Ms. Joy Tang, Founding Director of oneVillage Foundation, Ghana .

The keynote speech was given by Kieran Ryan, Director of Department of Computer Science at Sacred Heart College, Belize. This presentation gave a history of the FOSS movement in Central America. FOSS could play a role in contributing to the education system by working with NGO's to promote distributed learning centers in rural areas of Belize. The strategy for FOSS in Central America was compared to the successful dissemination of FOSS in Brazil. A discussion followed the presentation on the topic of how Brazil succeeded in implementing Open Source in their communities and how Central American could follow in Brazil's footsteps.

Ms. Tang, the moderator, ensured that the audience participated and contributed with insights of their experiences that shed light on the questions posed in the talk. Ms. Tang also asked significant questions that when answered could lead to important steps being made in coming up with FOSS dissemination strategies in developing countries.

Professor Chao-Kuie Hung, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Information Management, from Chaoyang University of Technology, shared issues he has dealt with in assisting rural communities in Taiwan bridge the digital divide using open source. His concept of using bootable USB flash drives with FOSS most definitely can play a role in disseminating FOSS in Central America.

Mr. Alvin is an inspiring teacher from Keelung who has implemented 100% adoption of FOSS on computers in his school. His working knowledge of the issues associated with FOSS dissemination in education was very useful and relevant. Mr. Alvin is living proof that FOSS can be successfully be adopted in the school system.

Thank you to Mr. Apple, our friends from Indonesia, and to all the attendees of the presentation for their attendance and contributions.