After almost 1 year of implementing our Mentawai cultural education program, the Yayasan Pendidikan Suku Mentawai (YPSM) team have initiated a cultural celebration festival to coincide with Indonesia’s 73rd anniversary. This event brings all of the YPSM student groups from

The last few months we have been busy finalising our team, organising our new office, scouting a location to host our program and continuing to formally introduce our program to the wider community and government officials. For those interested, the

Last Friday, 15 September, the Yayasan Pendidikan Suku Mentawai was formally inaugurated along with our Mentawai Ecotourism and new office space in Desa Muntei. The inauguration event is an important step to establishing the Yayasan within the Mentawai community, giving

Due to the wonderful response and support we’re receiving via the Indigenous Education Foundation (IEF) and their As Worlds Divide #wafsac – ‘watch a film, save a culture’ campaign, our Suku Mentawai ‘Cultural and Environmental Education Program’ (CEEP) is now officially

It has been a rather eventful month in Mentawai – gathering documentation for a campaign video; furthering our strategy to enable the community an avenue to sustain their cultural education program; and meeting with Mentawai Government heads to discuss their

Each day we move a step closer toward achieving our goals with Suku Mentawai and the Cultural and Environmental Education Program (CEEP). These past few months have been particularly productive. Travelling to Siberut Island with members of the Suku Mentawai team,

Whether we choose to ignore it or not, tourism does impact local communities and their native environment in a big way – sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. What is important, however, is that we do have control over the decisions we

Together with August Sikatsila, Suku Mentawai’s program manager, we’ve spent the past month gathering cultural and environmental-based research in the Sarereiket regions of Siberut Island. August headed our previous community research and survey activities and is indeed right at home

Early November I met with Esmat in Padang (West Sumatra) to finalize registration of the Indonesian Foundation setup to operate the Suku Mentawai program. Namely, the ‘Yayasan Pendidikan Global Pribumi Indonesia’. This is now complete. Big thanks to Yeni and