Monalisa, Indonesia

I channel my expertise into landscape restoration and environmental education with the German-based NGO Fairventures Worldwide. Besides my work as the Communication Coordinator for Fairventures Worldwide in Indonesia, I am also working with my local community in Hurung Bunut to reawaken sustainable farming practices and provide alternative incomes for the villagers. I am now the head of a small farmer group in my village. I hope these initiatives will help restore idle and degraded land formerly used for illegal gold mining. I am one of the founders of limarupa.id, a group of young people in Palangkaraya that helps small entrepreneurs create and promote sustainable products. Limarupa.id currently supports a women’s collective to produce organic single-use straws as a plastic alternative. The straws are made of a wild grass growing naturally in Borneo’s endangered peat areas. The project aims to create a new source of income for people who live in peatlands, increasing the incentive to protect these critical carbon sinks from annual fires.