Tune Your Radios to a Greener Jakarta

Tune Your Radios to a Greener Jakarta

For those stuck twirling the dial during smoggy commutes, Green Radio is a breath of fresh air for those who like their news mixed with a daily dose of environmental responsibility.

Broadcasting on 89.2-FM, Green Radio is the only news station in Jakarta whose main focus is educating listeners about the big and small changes they can make to benefit the environment.

“Green Radio was inspired by the floods in 2007 that left more than 70 percent of the Jakarta area drowned,” said Santosa, the station’s managing director. “There must be something wrong with the environment, so one day I came up with an idea to change our previous station, Radio Utan Kayu, which focused on more general issues, to Green Radio.”

The station’s tag line is “The eco-lifestyle of Jakarta,” and Santosa said more than 200,000 people tune in daily across Greater Jakarta to listen to news, environmental reports and discussions.

And the small station’s influence extends beyond the reach of its radio transmitters. Besides broadcasting a message urging environmental consciousness, Green Radio has also spearheaded programs aimed at getting their audience actively involved. “Green Radio has on-air activities and also off-air activities because we want to encourage the public, through our listeners, to get involved to save the planet and help to avoid floods in Jakarta such as the 2007 flood,” Santosa said.

And it isn’t all just talk. From day one, Green Radio has used solar panels to power its 18-hour broadcast day.

“I decided to use solar panels because they are very environmentally friendly and use an unlimited natural resource: the sun,” Santosa said.

So far, Green Radio has organized three initiatives: the Friends of the Forest tree adoption campaign at Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park, a clean-up of the area around Monas in June and a biopore creation workshop. Biopores are small holes drilled in the ground to decrease flooding.

Green Radio collaborates with private sector and government organizations as well as members of its audience, Santosa said, adding that the station has had more than 2000 individual participants take part in its greening programs.

Through its Friends of the Forest adoption program, individuals and organizations donate Rp 108,000 ($12) to have a tree planted in a deforested area in Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park in West Java. Green Radio has collected enough money to plant 7,031 trees in a 10-hectare area over the last 18 months, decreasing soil erosion at the farms that line the park’s borders.

“We’ve already got 15 big organizations and 300 individual adopters,” Santosa said. The program was created in partnership with the park and Conservation International Indonesia.

He added that the program was also helping reclaim parts of the forest from local farmers who use the park to plant crops, and trains those farmers for new careers in eco-tourism. At a cost of Rp 290,000 per person for two days and one night, the tour provides lodgings in a campground or tree house, five meals, guides, porters and the planting of a tree.

“The income goes to local farmers who help us organize the eco-tours. They prepare the food and act as forest guides and porters.” Santosa said, adding that some farmers were also given goats, rabbits and honeybees to breed.

In addition to Friends of the Forest, Green Radio has also developed a biopore program, active since July 2009.

“The biopore program is a regular training program that teaches people how to make small holes [in the ground] for water absorption. They can absorb more water in the rainy season and also can be used to produce compost.” Santosa said.

Each biopore is designed with a 10-centimeter opening and with a depth of one meter.

Through partnership with the Body Shop retail chain and Mall Ciputra, Green Radio’s program has been responsible for the creation of 1,500 biopores across Jakarta.

“We are working together with these caring communities to help reach the government’s goal of creating one million biopores,” Santosa said. “Hopefully, these biopores will help us to avoid another big flood like the Jakarta flood in 2007.”

History Buffs Go in Search of Indonesia's Past

History Buffs Go in Search of Indonesia's Past

One only has to look at the demolition of colonial-era buildings across the country to see that heritage and history here are undervalued.

Sahabat Museum (Friends of the Museum) is a community of Indonesians who want to change that attitude, especially in young people.

From monuments, museums and temples, the group has introduced and dissected the country’s past for its thousands of members.

Ade “Adep” Hardika Purnama, 33, founded the community with a simple mailing list on Yahoo Groups in 2002.

“Since then, the online forum has attracted more than 4,600 members. We use it to share everything, from stories about our national heroes to our tour itineraries,” Ade said.

The group’s first trip, in 2003, was to Merdeka Square and Istiqlal Mosque in Central Jakarta. As many as 400 members took part in it.

Lala Amiroedin, 33, recalled that first outing seven years ago. “Back then, I had just returned from studying in the States and wanted to know more about Jakarta. My friend told me about this group and I thought it was really cool,” she said.

To date, the group has arranged 77 excursions. Participants range in age from young children to the elderly — even Adep’s 65-year-old mother, Wisdawati Amran, has taken part.

Adep said his mother used to take him on frequent trips to historic sites, such as those in the Old Town area of Jakarta, and he hopes parents today do the same for their children.

Sahabat Museum has also arranged visits to Cirebon, where a West Javanese kingdom once reigned, and Ambarawa, Central Java, which saw a battle between Indonesian and British forces in 1945 during the struggle for independence.

The group has also visited sites outside Java, such as Padang in West Sumatra and Banda Neira in Maluku, where the country’s founding fathers lived in exile during the Dutch occupation.

Sahabat Museum also invites guest speakers to give presentations about different historic sites. One such speaker is Lilie Suratminto, a history professor at the University of Indonesia.

“I always say that a nation that does not know its own history is an ignorant nation,” Lilie said. “So I am impressed to see that there are still a lot of people who are interested in learning about the country’s history and visiting museums.”

Outings are arranged by volunteers from the group and usually cost between Rp 35,000 ($4) and Rp 75,000 for trips in Jakarta, and from Rp 2 million to Rp 5 million for trips outside Java, covering everything from plane tickets, meals and accommodation.

Upcoming Tours

May 13-16 Malang, Blitar and Kediri in East Java; Rp 2 million-Rp 3 million.

May 28-30 Bengkulu, where former President Sukarno lived in exile; Rp 2 million-Rp 3 million

October 25-31 Ternate, Tidore, Halmahera and Morotai islands in Maluku; Rp 6 million

Sahabat Museum

sahabatmuseum@yahoogroups.com

Making a Home For Indonesian Prose Online

Making a Home For Indonesian Prose Online

Think of us as failed short story writers,” said Prasodjo Chusnato Sukiman. “This is why we’re doing this.”

The 35-year-old was referring to sriti.com, an archive of published short stories in Bahasa Indonesia, which he co-manages with a number of avid readers.

The project traces its beginnings to the 1990s, when Chusnato and fellow students Sjaiful Masri and Taofik Hidayat used to meet under a kapok tree at the Bogor Agriculture Institute to swap books and talk about and cut out short stories published in newspapers.

Calling themselves Salju Bogor (Snow of Bogor), after the cottony fiber that floats from a burst kapok pod, their activities back then attracted the attention of Yanusa Nugroho, a short story writer who taught them literature and writing, and who also introduced them to big-name authors like Ayu Utami and Djenar Maesa Ayu.

Over the years, though, the group’s scrapbooks of short stories began to yellow and fall apart. It was then that Chusnato came up with the idea of retyping the stories and uploading them on the Internet.

“Our goal was to compile literature from print media [in one place],” he said.

Taofik designed a Web site, which they named sriti.com, after a small bird with an injured wing that they found under the kapok tree one time.

“We treated it and the next day it flew away,” Chusnato said. “It was a very moving moment.”

Sriti.com was born on Aug. 15, 2000. It was not easy at the start. “Back then, not many newspapers uploaded short stories onto their official Web sites,” Chusnato said.

Chusnato and Taofik worked on their own for three years, paying for the site’s maintenance out of their own pockets.

The Web site, however, grew steadily. More people joined the project, including Sjaiful Masri, Anggoro Gunawan and Bany Akbar, churning out weekly installments of short stories published in national newspapers like Kompas, Media Indonesia, Republika and Suara Pembaharuan, as well as local publications like Jawa Pos, Batam Pos and Pos Kupang.

Occasionally, a writer would ask to have their story removed from the site. For the most part, however, writers have had no reservations about sriti.com. It now has a collection of 3,394 short stories written by 935 authors and previously published in 53 print media outlets. Sriti.com’s popularity among Indonesian readers has prompted several publishing companies to approach the site’s moderators for a compilation of selected short stories in book form. For a time, most of the site’s moderators held out, saying they did not have the editorial authority as readers and were not as capable of story selection as members of the mainstream media.

Bany, however, had a different opinion. “He said that if we want to get involved in Indonesian literature, we have to produce something that everyone can read, not just those with access to the Internet,” Chusnato said, adding that it was also Bany’s idea to allocate the proceeds of the published project to finance maintenance for the Web site.

They decided to take up Gramedia Pustaka Utama’s offer. Early this month, “Bob Marley dan 11 Cerpen Pilihan Sriti.com 0809” (“Bob Marley and 11 Chosen Short Stories by Sriti.com 0809”) was published. The book is a compilation of 12 short stories archived from January 2008 to August 2009.

The group had initially chosen 15 stories, but had to drop three because the authors would not give permission for their stories to be included in the anthology.

Bamby Cahyadi, 40, whose short story “Aku Bercerita Dari Pesawat Yang Sedang Terbang” (“I Tell a Story From a Flying Airplane”) was previously published in the July 26, 2009, issue of Koran Tempo, said he had no problem having his work archived on sriti.com. Bamby, who manages a fast-food restaurant in Jakarta, said the Web site was “a milestone for Indonesian literature.”

“Though what they are doing seems simple enough, they nevertheless are playing a part in the development of Indonesian literature,” he said, adding that sriti.com had helped introduce readers to authors from around Indonesia who have only been published in local media.

Mirna Yulistiati, from Gramedia Pustaka Utama, said sriti.com was highly recognizable among readers. “When they can’t find a story anywhere else, they turn to sriti.com,” she said.