Friends Peace Teams 'Indonesia Initiative'
From: indonesianews-friendspeaceteams-owner@lists.riseup.net
On Behalf Of: Indonesia Initiative
Sent: Friday, 15 April 2011 10:42 PM
To: indonesianews-friendspeaceteams@lists.riseup.net
Subject: [indonesianews-friendspeaceteams] Artist Residency
Dear Friends,
We have fully funded the "The Peace Place" in Pati, Central Java!
Grand Opening of "The Peace Place" will be a six-day training beginning on June 19, 2011. We successfully raised funds to cover one year's salary for the director, Nanik (she only has one name as is common in Java), and to move a traditional Javanese teak house to the property. The workshops include nonviolence training, trauma healing, developmental play, conscience and re-naturalize lifestyles. Nanik is from a conservative Mennonite Church. She attended the Friends World Committee for Consultation gathering in Manila and said she felt she’d come home. Christian and Muslim staff have committed to working cooperatively to build this program based on Friends' practices in an area of Indonesia where there is a great deal of religious tension and violence.
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Nadine and Nanik training teachers in the very conservative Islamic community of Tondomulyo Central Java.
Another significant accomplishment this year was that Yunardi Bardo (Yuyun) finished illustrating his first developmentally appropriate children's picture book. At the Austin Librarian's Book Exhibition, international children's books publishers affirmed that they have looked in Indonesia for books to translate to English and have not found any.
We would like to fund a six-month residency for Yuyun to come to Alfred University to work in the print and electronic media labs for the fall semester. He would bring his work and be prepared to show it in July - December, 2011. He would live at my house and we would continue to work on producing more books. He could spend time reading children's books at the library and book stores to greatly expand his ideas, since he, as most Indonesian, has never seen developmentally appropriate books.
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You will find his story at: http://www.fptindonesia.org
and click the second link on the left (Yunardi Bardo).
To make this opportunity a reality, we need to raise $2,000 or a bit more for Yuyun's transportation and expenses for six months. Please help us share his story with people who might like to support this illustrator and the establishment of developmental early readers for Indonesia. Together we CAN make an historic difference in the world.
Thank you for making all this work in the world possible!
In peace,
Nadine
Inquiries to: Nadine Hoover,
Coordinator,
Friends Peace Teams-Indonesia,
90 W University St, Alfred,NY 14802
Ph 1-607-542-9029 (from Indonesia 0818-0808-9029)
Indonesia@FriendsPeaceTeams.org
www.FriendsPeaceTeams.org
Donations to: Friends Peace Teams, Indonesia Initiative,
1001 Park Ave, St. Louis,
MO 63104 1-314-588-1122 (note Indonesia on memo line) Every bit counts and is appreciated, making our work possible!
Silver-Treated Ceramic Water Filters in Indonesia 2009
The water filter development, which Friends Peace Teams began raising funds for in the fall of 2007, is steadily, although slowly, moving forward. Once some funds were secured, Friends Peace Teams made arrangements with a national Indonesian charitable organization, the Society for Health, Education, Environment and Peace (SHEEP) to co-sponsor a training in production of silver-treated ceramic water filters. SHEEP identified participants and provided hospitality, training facilities and access to large kiln firing. They were the only ones who committed to ensuring that, once in production, the filter price would remain as low as feasible and that the technology would remain open through educational programs to share the technology with others.
Friends Peace Teams then supported Reid Harvey from Silver Ceramic Systems in Alfred, New York to travel to Jogjakarta, Indonesia to train ten people in the production of silver-treated, ceramic water filters in November 2008. Friends Peace Teams supplied equipment and materials for the training, including fabrication of a press, construction of a test kiln and materials for filters and water testing. For video clips of this workshop see: www.silverceramicsystems.com
Friends Peace Teams undertook this work in Indonesia because so many Indonesians are in constant pain from dehydration, which precludes working together on other activities such as alternatives to violence, trauma healing or developmental play. Whether war, natural disaster or poverty, life is hard when people do not have access to clean drinking water.
Reid taught people to produce a "ceramic candle filter," which is treated with a tiny amount of silver nitrate prior to firing, providing 100% removal of pathogens without a trace of silver in the filtered water. Studies indicate that users of the filters find them to be both appropriate and easy to maintain. The filter price is below US$8.00, which is affordable to people living on very low incomes for a source of drinking water that lasts for decades.
The first major production obstacle was that another company purchased all available quality clay en masse, so we could only access low-quality clay that required extensive processing before use. The second major obstacle was that SHEEP advanced a large sum of money to the kiln owner to purchase materials, who absconded with the funds. It took some time to figure out what happened and recover the funds. As a result, SHEEP dedicated staff from inside their own ranks to work full-time on procuring materials, managing the process and locating another kiln. By February 2009, production was underway.
The next set of obstacles was with design elements. The plastic end-caps used in Nepal were financially prohibitive in Indonesia, so the Indonesians spent a great deal of time experimenting and designing ceramic end-caps that are glaze sealed to the filter. Once the end-cap problem was solved, they went into production. In 2009, they produced 290 filters, but production was dramatically slowed because they did not know how to guarantee the effectiveness of each and every filter.
SHEEP reported to Friends Peace Teams that the need and demand for filters is as urgent as ever, but they really need support in how to approach quality assurance. The Alfred Area Alternatives to Violence Coordinator, Nicholas Dosch, is a ceramic engineer working in the Alfred University labs on these filters and from the first time he heard about the project had asked, "How are you going to guarantee each filter?" So we approached Nick, who agreed to go to Jogjakarta in March of 2010 to review their production area and assist them in developing a quality assurance mechanism. Hopefully as this problem is resolved, they will be able to move into full production.
This ceramic water filter is now widely accepted, since the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged their use in June 2009. Other groups in Indonesia have copied our filter, which we've taken as the greatest form of flattery. We tracked all of them back to one USAID contractor, however, who has produced 32 filters and has not even begun thinking about production although they have spent massive amounts of money. We did speak to USAID feeling that a larger funding source may be appropriate at this juncture, but felt in the end that our small-scale approach stood a better chance of resolving problems and actually getting to production than their more high-profile approach, so we persist.
As we await the resolution of the quality assurance problem, SHEEP is looking into concerns about patents. We support open-source technology, but are concerned about low-quality copy-cats threatening public trust in the filters once they're in production. For future insurance, it might be best to patent the technology in Indonesia so if such a case arises there is the possibility of legal recourse.
As we face the current tragedy in Haiti, a Friend involved in international aid and relief said, "Tell young people that hurrying down here to help is not the only, nor necessarily the best, thing they can do. They need to work on all types of supports for people in disasters as we are going to face more and more of this. Like those water filters. We know about them, but no one has started large-scale production. If anyone were producing them, we would order them by the thousands right now. Tell them to work on that." I have passed the word on to Nicholas Dosch and our friends at SHEEP. While results have not been as immediate as we would have wished, we are clear that taking the time to build a solid, locally-controlled base for this effort is what will guarantee the greatest success in the long term. We thank all of our donors for your support and encouragement.