Mercy Corps Internship and Research Update

Hello everyone,

I apologize for the delay. I have been soo busy with my internship and with my research. Today I will update on both. Actually wait, I should mention I am fine and was not involved in the bombings at all. I am on a completely different island and other than being traumatized by the grotesque images allowed to be shown on Indonesian news channels I am perfectly OK. I might delay my return to Jakarta but that's the only impact this bombing has on me. Please keep the victims and their families in your thoughts and prayers. Really terrible what happened.

My Mercy Corps work has really started getting interesting. Before I was attending most of the community meetings, trainings and workshops, documenting them all, and compiling for a case study report for the international community and potential funders. I am still doing this for two MercyCorps Indonesia projects: Public-Private Partnership for Disaster Management in West Sumatra (P3DM) and the Jakarta Flood Risk Reduction (FRR) Program that is now completed. Additionally, I am supposed to help the office bring in at least one more business to the P3DM program (the private sector part of the partnership). Those are my deliverables in my contract for before I leave Indonesia.

Last week the Country Director, Sean, came for three days and did field visits with us. Weeks ago I had recommended a private sector survey be complete but it seemed we were understaffed and it wouldn't be possible. One night I was helping Cynara, my Indonesian sister, edit her CV, and I learned about a program at Andalas University for Governance Research that worked with GTZ and Munich Re in 2007 doing risk assessments through household surveys and in-depth interviews. Discussing this program more with Cynara I learned that they have students trained for doing surveys and each student loves to help becuase they get a certificate and can put it on their CV's. This got me thinking about how we can do the survey quickly and cheaply without utilizing Mercy Corps resources. I brought this idea up to Sean while in the car to Pesisir Selatan and he loved it. We all brainstormed (Bu Endang, POPO, and Sean) about the project and after getting back to the office late that night I was so excited that I created the survey and a brochure to be handed to each business.

Yesterday we finalized all the planning and on Tuesday (Monday is an Indonesian holiday) we will begin. The Andalas University Governance Research Program has recruited 9 students. Each student will be required to complete 10 surveys per day in each nagari (village). We will canvass for three days in four villages for a total of 360 surveys (360 times the amount agreed to in my contract, haha!). Each business will also be left with a brochure about the program that includes how they can get in contact with Mercy Corps, and 10 things they can do to be a disaster prepared business. I am so excited about this project because it will help jumpstart the private sector engagement here in the villages, will create a communication network for disaster risk reduction work, will increase awareness of the private sector, and at the end of the month I hope to create a Private Sector Engagement in DRR Tool Box for Mercy Corps. Additionally, I am going to meet with the Trade and Industry Department of the Provincial Government here to get their data on small, medium, and large businesses to improve our data collection. All of this will not only result in the tool box but also a private sector matrix to keep information about all the businesses in our field sites. When we do trainings or need support for a disaster risk reduciton or mitigation infrastrucutre project there will be a user-friendly database ready for the West Sumatran Office's use. Wish me luck. Lots to do before Tuesday to make sure this runs smoothly. How funny is it that I leave CCE and leave the country and still I find myself running a canvass. Once a canvasser, always a canvasser. Never leaves the blood I guess, haha!

Research Update: I have completed 20 in-depth interviews about climate change adaptation for the coasts with heads of departments at the Provincial Government such as Fisheries Dinas (Department), Social Dinas, Health Dinas, Environment Dinas, Public Works Dinas, and Forestry Dinas. On Friday at 2:00PM I have a meeting scheduled with Governor Fauzi to interview him as well. That will complete my provincial level interviews. While the canvassers are doing the private sector surveys next week, my translator, Redian, and I will be conducting interviews at the district-level and village-level. Hopefully I will complete enough of these next week and be done with interviews in West Sumatra so I can finish up my Mercy Corps projects and go SCUBA diving and surf every evening (but I highly doubt that. I can dream though, lol).

The part of my fieldwork that I know I am terrible at is keeping organized and up-to-date field notes. A good researcher makes sure to spend about four hours every night writing up what they did for the day and trying to make sense of the data so they can tweak things as they go. Living with a host family makes this just about impossible unless I want to start doing that at 11:00PM. I am telling you this because I figure that if I mention to everyone the flaw in my research then maybe I will be motivated to correct it as best I can.

Climate Project Update: Somehow I also managed to get myself invited to give presentations on climate change and so on Wednesday I spoke to an international high school, about 70 students, to motivate them about education and future careers, and also on climate change. The speech was about one hour with lots of questions. A reporter was present and so I was in the newspaper on Thursday (Singgalang is the name of the paper) - an article and a photo! The next day I gave a presentation (through a translator, my first presentation with one) to the local disaster NGO, KOGAMI (Komunitas Siaga Tsunamis). There were about 20-25 facilitators present and it was on Environmental Management and Climate Change in Disaster Risk Reduction. This went about 2 hours and 20 minutes. They said they will incorporate what they learned into their action plan. Sweet! I have noticed here a big misunderstanding between global warming, change in the weather, and the ozone layer. So hopefully I cleared that up with the students and with the KOGAMI facilitators and they will spread the word.

Tomorrow and Monday I will be in Bukattinggi, THE tourism attraction in West Sumatra up in the highlands near a volcano. This is where I will buy everyone's postcards and souveniers most likely. I have seriously tried five places now for postcards and still no luck (2 places I tried this afternoon after buying supplies for the survey next week like clipboards, pens, ID holders, etc). Please be patient and know that a postcard with your name on it is on the way!

Love you all and miss you lots. Please comment. Keeps me sane.

Ps. The top photo is of Sean, our country, director, Bu Endang, my boss, POPO, our engineer (with the map), and the others are Kogami facilitators. the second photo is at the Uni and Uda Pageant (basically a competition to be Tourism Ambassador). The former winners are wearing the traditional minang clothes. The third picture is in a traditional fishing boat at Pantai Air Manis after a surf session.