Southeast Asia: Samdhana Institute
Southeast Asia boasts impressive and unique ecosystems, but it is also a region whose environment is facing unprecedented threats. Indonesia has one one of the highest deforestation rates in the world as well as the highest level of CO2 emissions from deforestation and land use change, while urbanization, rampant development pressures, chronic poverty, unsustainable agricultural and mineral extraction, and the loss of rights over resources are among a few of the issues shared by communities across the region. At the same time, social and environmental movements have become much stronger in recent years. Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of this movement. Well-organized and thoughtful groups are articulating alternatives that can help to solve some of the deep-rooted social and environmental issues of the region.
Founded in 2001 as a fellowship organization, the Samdhana Institute integrated grantmaking into its programs in 2005 to help indigenous groups in Southeast Asia address these pressing environmental concerns. Today, Samdhana acts as an advisor for Global Greengrants Fund grants to groups in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Its vision is for a region where natural, cultural, and spiritual diversity are valued and environmental conflicts are resolved peacefully, with justice and equity for all parties. Achieving this requires that communities who directly manage their local natural resources have clear rights, ready recourse to justice, strong and skilled leadership, stable financial resources, and access to appropriate technical support. For more information on Samdhana, click here.
- Provide support for village based resource management
- Strengthen local organizations
- Support the recovery and renewal of natural resources in conflict areas
- Defend rights and access to natural resources
- Halt the cycle of poverty, powerlessness, and environmental degradation
- Promote and respect local knowledge
- Nurture grassroots leaders and organizations
- Encourage networking and movement building
Board Priorities
Equitable access to and control over natural resources
Village-based resource management schemes (includes economic activities)
Organizational strengthening
Recovery and renewal of resources in conflict areas
Defense of land and resource rights
Countries
- 55-463 (1 grant)
- Cambodia (3 grants)
- Indonesia (118 grants)
- Kyrgyz Republic (1 grant)
- Lao PDR (4 grants)
- Malaysia (2 grants)
- Philippines (67 grants)
- Thailand (3 grants)
AMAN Enggano
Grant #: 53-912
Amount: $4,625
Country: Indonesia
Focus: SustenanceAMAN Enggano advocates for the rights and interests of the indigenous peoples of Enggano Island and aims to improve their opportunities for sustainable, local livelihoods. AMAN supports a local business group that works to meld coastal conservation with income generating opportunities in two businesses: a dried fish enterprise and a melinjo-chip (fruit) business. The group will also work to formalize a traditional coastal management process.
Kelompok Usaha Bersama Tenun Adat Rongkong
Grant #: 53-907
Amount: $4,620
Country: Indonesia
Focus: Indigenous PeoplesKelompok Usaha Bersama Tenun Adat Rongkong works to preserve indigenous cultural knowledge and practices so that important traditions can be passed on to younger generations. In the Rongkong community, woven cloth is a meaningful cultural symbol; however, there are only nine elderly weavers in the community. Kelompok Usaha Bersama Tenun Adat Rongkong will lead a three month training program for youth from nine villages who will then return to their villages with the skill and equipment necessary to develop their own weaving practice.
Kemos Media
Grant #: 53-910
Amount: $4,630
Country: Indonesia
Focus: Indigenous PeoplesKEMOS is a media project that advocates for the protections of the Rinjani Mountain ecosystem. Using Samdhana funds, KEMOS was able to create a documentary film highlighting Rinjani tradition, culture, and art. It is hoped that a public viewing of the film will reinforce and reinvigorate community pride and activism, and contribute to environmental protection efforts. Further, it aims to bring local government attention to the links between tradition and the ecosystem. The films were shown at a local festival in September and October.
Chandra Kirana Prijosusilo
Coordinator
Chandra Kirana has worked in a number of advocacy roles: as a farmer organizer in Central Java, a co-founder of an NGO supporting local farmers, a women’s rights activist, a Greenpeace Toxics campaign coordinator in Southeast Asia, a communications and advocacy strategy adviser for the Biodiversity Support Program-Kemala, and Director of communications and outreach at the WWF-Indonesia office. Chandra's longtime hobby has been bead-making, and, in addition to her more formal work, she has set up a partnership with fellow craftswomen for a small bead-making enterprise called ‘Kirosia,’ which she hopes will expand among craftswomen in various villages as alternative source of income and a favorite pastime.
Neni Rochaeni
Administrator
Neni’s experience in personnel and administrative management stretches across more than 20 years. Though she started off her career working for oil companies, she quickly transitioned into non-profit, environmental advocacy roles. Since her career transition, she has worked with PACT, a U.S.-based NGO, the World Wide Fund for Nature, and grant-giving organizations BSP Kamala and Yayasan Kamala. Neni graduated from University of Indonesia, with a degree in Human Resources Management in 1992.
Sean Foley
EcoAsia Limited
Sean Foley is a natural resource management and environment policy and planning specialist. He has been instrumental in several key country programs on environmental management in Laos, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines, including programs on community based land and watershed rehabilitation and management in Indonesia and Nepal. He received his Ph.D. in Natural Resource management from the University in Murdoch, Western Australia; his dissertation was titled, “The Ecological Transformation in Bali.” In addition to professional work, he is active as the Regional Advisor for The Samdhana Institute for mainland Asia.
Tjatur Kukuh
Nusa Tenggara Community Foundation
Using his knowledge of institutional capacity building and community development, Tjatur currently balances his involvement with Samdhana and Greengrants with his position as executive director of the Santiri Foundation and as leader of the SAMANTA community foundation. Tjatur has been at the forefront of environmental movements across Indonesia, and has founded multiple programs and organizations, such as the Environmental Parliament Watch (2004) and the SAFety (Socio Agro Forestry) program (2008). He graduated from the Architecture Faculty of ITS, Indonesia, in 1984.
Edtami Mansayagan
Philippine National Commission of Indigenous Peoples
Edtami brings his extensive experience in indigenous advocacy to his role on the Samdhana Board. An Arumanen Manobo (an indigenous people from Cotabato, Philippines) himself, he has worked in various capacities for many indigenous peoples advocacy groups, including his most recent roles as executive director of the Tribal Filipino Center for Development and as a member of the Presidential Task Force for Indigenous Peoples. He is also the Chairperson of the Arumanen Ne Menuvu Advisory Council, their governing council, and a current member of the Board for the Foundation of the Philippine Environment. Edtami holds a degree in Theology from a Protestant Seminary.
Sandra Moniaga
advisor for masyarakat adat
Sandra has used her training in law to advocate for environmental and indigenous rights for over 20 years. Since receiving her law degree from Parahyangan Catholic University, Indonesia, in 1986, she has co-developed and led several local and national NGOs (LBBT Pontianak, ELSAM, ICEL, PtPPMA Papua, HuMa, Learning Center HuMa) focusing on rights-based and poor oriented policy advocacy, legal resource development, democratization of law reform, and knowledge management. Most recently, she served as Executive Director of HuMa, the Association for Community and Ecologic-Based Law Reform. In 2004, Sandra began a PhD in Law at the University of Leiden, Netherlands.
Cristi Nozawa
BirdLife International
Cristi began her work for social reform in the Philippines with her involvement in the political struggle against the Marcos dictatorship in the early 1980s; at the time she was a staff writer for the Philippine Collegian at the University of the Philippines. Since then, she has had roles with the Harbion Foundation, a Philippine-based nonprofit organization and Save Palawan Campaign (Botosa Inang Bayan), which evolved into a nationwide anti-commercial longing campaign. Today, Christi is engaged in advocacy for funding mechanisms based in and managed by, the global South and community-based natural resources management. She holds a postgraduate degree in rural resources and environmental policy from the University of London.
Gamal Pasya
Socio-environmentalist
Gamal Pasya is a Socio-environmentalist who works in the fields of regional development planning, community development, natural resources policy advocation, multi-stakeholder partnership development, and natural resources conflict management. He has been focusing on these fields since he was a student activist in 1985. Gamal contributes as trainer, mediator, and negotiator of natural resource conflict resolution in several sites in Indonesia such as in Lampung (mainly in West Lampung District and Gunung Betung Conservation Forest Park), Rinjani National Park-Lombok, and East Sumba. He provides advise on practical, peaceful strategies and facilitation efforts to community groups, local government agencies and NGOs on how to manage conflicts to develop collaboration. As a provincial government civil servant, he supervises an integrated regional development planning approach to local government units. On behalf of World Agroforestry Centre, he also works as voluntary mentor to several NGOs on natural resources program development and later he stands as voluntary member of National Steering Committee (NSC) of Small Grant Program to Promote Tropical Forest (SGP PTF) - The EC UNDP in providing partnership advise and proponent proposal review for Indonesia.
Nonette Royo
Executive Director
Nonette is a lawyer, an activist, and an author in the fields of natural resources management and empowerment of indigenous peoples. In the Philippines she co-founded an organization for legal, policy research and advocacy on indigenous peoples rights, and another one on women’s rights, and was Vice President of Xavier University until recently. In Indonesia Nonette assists environmental advocacy and social justice movements. She facilitated the setting up of several NGO networks and multi stakeholder coalitions in key forest and biodiversity locations. Nonette helped develop the Indigenous People’s Support Fund, which focuses on nurturing local indigenous organizations’ vision of sustaining work in protecting last remaining, key contiguous biodiverse landscapes in the region.
Ambrosius Ruwindrijarto
Environmental Activist
Ruwi co-founded Telapak, an environmental NGO based in Bogor, Indonesia, and served as its Executive Director from 1999 until 2002, and currently as its President. Ruwi is engaged in various fields of environmental advocacy, independent media, community organizing, business development, and entrepreneurship. Ruwi’s leadership is shown, among others, at Telapak which is pioneering “from illegal logging to community logging” movement, PT Bahtera Lestari, a community-owned marine ornamental exporter based in Bali, and PT Poros Nusantara, a social and commercial consortium of communities and NGOs producing and trading marine and forestry products, and Kendari TV, a local television stations in Southeast Sulawesi. Ruwi hopes to be a fiction writer someday. Through Samdhana, Ruwi is committed to be part of indigenous people, farmers, and fishers’ struggle towards ecological, social, and economic integrity.
Satyawan Sunito
adviser for farmer’s movement
Satyawan’s commitment to local solutions has made him a valuable asset to the Samdhana institute. His advocacy has taken shape in his field research into Indonesian farming communities, and he has authored and co-authored numerous articles on the subject of community based resource management. Over the years, Satyawan has held positions as a teacher and a researcher at universities in Indonesia and abroad and as a coordinator and consultant for various NGOs. Satyawan received bachelors’ degrees in anthropology and non-western sociology from the University of Leiden, Netherlands, and a Ph.D. from Kassel University, Germany.
Elizabeth Villamor
General Manager
Beth's specialization is in the field of organization development, institution building, and financial management. To her role at the Samdhana institute, she brings 14 years of experience working with a non-govenment organization focused on assisting indigenous peoples have access to, manage and develop their ancestral domain. Her experience includes work with the GUAVA Dynamics Consulting Co., Inc. (Governing Uncertainties And Vulnerabilities in Alleviating poverty), the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center, Inc. (LRC), and the NGO, Working Group on the Asian Development Bank. She is also a mother of two smart boys, Paulo and JF.
Jocelyn Villanueva
Indigenous Peoples Support Fund
Jo is a human rights and indigenous peoples’ advocate, feminist and mining activist. For the past 19 years, she has worked with indigenous peoples and local communities, development organizations and social movements mostly in the Philippines and in some parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe on the issues of land rights, natural resources and environment, extractive issues, women/gender and organizational development. She was former Executive Director of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center/Friends of the Earth-Philippines. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the Mines and Communities (MAC), a network of mining activists around the world that is committed to expose the social, economic and environmental impacts of mining globally and assist mining-affected communities. As a Samdhana Fellow, she assists in the facilitation of the Learning and Exchange of the IUCN EGP Partners in Southeast Asia and is actively involve as facilitator and adviser of the Indigenous Peoples Support Fund. In Mindanao, she does volunteer work with the Indigenous Peoples Apostolate and the Ecology Desk of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro, provides technical support for the IP initiatives and participation in ongoing peace-building process with the Bangsamoro in Mindanao.
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