Eco-Tourism in the Rain Forest of Western Java, Indonesia

by Biological Science Club

Partners:

Biological Science Club (BScC) Gunung Halimun National Park (PHPA) McDonald's Indonesia Family Restaurants Wildlife Preservation Trust International Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies, University of Indonesia

Success Stories

Handicrafts purchased by visitors are important as remembrances brought from destinations they visit. In addition, handicrafts can also play a significant role in building a positive, distinctive image for travel destinations, especially when they appear in unique and beautiful forms. In Halimun, local communities surrounding the Park have produced a number of unique handicrafts made chiefly from bamboo and rattan materials, such as basket, rattan handbags, hats, and traditional household tools. Handicrafts thus far have been produced chiefly to meet the demands particularly from local buyers. These businesses are definitely small scale, and cannot, for the medium term at least, become the main source of household income.

Nevertheless, it is clear to see that this activity can be a good source of income if the local people's perhaps underutilized skills can be established (among new handicraft workers) and improved upon (among those already producing handicrafts). As part of project efforts for strengthening local capacity to produce marketable handicraft products, the project provided local people with two weeks training by experienced bamboo and rattan artists from Tasik Malaya (Paperts). Many varieties of new designs were taught, along with a better system for product management. The results from the training have been fantastic. It has been amazing to witness how the local people's skills have been improved, resulting in much better quality handicraft products being created. In the coming months, we will build upon this particular project success, and plan for taking the next steps in marketing these handicrafts.

Challenges

A major challenge faced by the project in the current year was local community capacity to meet the project objectives in enterprise development. The low standard of education possessed by the majority of local community members required outside assistance (particularly from project staffs) to a greater degree than was initially anticipated. Because of this circumstance, more technical assistance, guidance as well as attention had to be given by Field Managers in all three project activity sites. Considering this situation, Field Managers most likely will be assigned as temporary enterprise managers until the community members have enough ability to run the business themselves.

Training also had to be conducted at a slower rate than anticipated. As a result of our observations, we now feel that many trainings should be repeated with follow-ups in order to ensure that the new ideas, concepts, and practices become cemented in the participants.

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