Canadian charity lends helping hand in Solor

By Maria Kegel

VANCOUVER (JP): Miracles do happen and one place they have is on the remote island of Solor in East Flores.

When a devastating drought destroyed 98 percent of farmers' crops and threatened the lives of 13 feuding communities two years ago, the locals overcame their differences and formed an innovative community cooperative to help one another through the food crisis.

A handful of volunteers from two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who witnessed the locals' fierce determination to solve their problems by working together were inspired to bring the story home with them and to continue further aid.

And at a small restaurant some 10,000 kilometers away in Vancouver, Canada, those volunteers, grouped as the inVolVe network, gathered to host a fund-raising event called Footwork Against Famine to aid the miracle on Solor.

Close to 100 people from the Indonesian community here as well as Canadians who have lived in Indonesia packed the Tak Sangka restaurant last week to enjoy a buffet dinner and an array of entertainment in support of the effort to help the people of Solor help themselves.

More than C$2,200 was raised from the sold-out event as well as from additional donations made at the end of the night.

This is not the first event to raise money for the cooperative on Solor. The volunteer network also organized six Vancouver restaurants to donate a percentage of the dinners served on Oct. 4, 2000, and collected further donations from more than 200 diners. They raised C$4,000.

Through this year's dinner, one of the coordinators, Jerome Cheung, said he wanted to mobilize the Indonesian community here more.

"We had lots of Canadians turn out for the first dinner. But this time, we wanted more of the Indonesian-Canadian community to be a part of it," he said.

Cheung now heads the inVolVe network, the Vancouver-based group of people who have been touched by Indonesia through their volunteer experience, travel or family ties.

The group comprises eight to 11 volunteers, seven of whom are active, while the others give their time during events.

"My vision is to have people who have been to Indonesia, or are from there, to be involved in the network here in Canada and who can send back money. I'm hoping for $15,000 to $20,000 a year -- that would be good."

Since the donations are channeled through USC Canada, an NGO supporting the community program activities in Solor, the administration fees are omitted, maximizing the amount that reaches the communities. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has also pledged to match all public donations, sometimes up to three times the amount.

"Fund-raising is all about telling a story. The most effective fund-raising is done by people who have witnessed the activities. And so the volunteers are like the witnesses, who have gone to Solor, lived in huts and slept on dirt floors. And this is a face-to-face event with the young volunteers who were inspired with what they saw and did, and want to give a helping hand," Cheung said.

"I first went there in 1995 when the Canadian World Youth program started a partnership with USC, which had a water project there. I then returned as a volunteer to USC's office in Yogyakarta and had opportunities to return each year to Solor as I knew the community really well. The Canadian World Youth program continued to send people there and soon 30 Canadians ended up living there, and USC is the link to the island."

The projects helped communities build their own water systems which they could manage, and together with a USC field officer, they developed a plan to help each other through the food crisis.

With the emergency food assistance, the 13 communities set up the Gelekat Lewo (caring for our village) Cooperative.

Now in its second year, the cooperative is providing farmers of villages on Solor with fair commodities trading, bulk-food purchasing, a new microcredit program and access to a living seed bank, where traditional crop species are conserved and distributed. The bank also allows members to acquire seeds during crises when their seed stocks are depleted.

But the cooperative is still struggling under the impact of the continuing financial crisis, which is paralyzing the archipelago's economy.

"The community is very poor and isolated, and no one really goes there except 30 crazy Canadians," Cheung said referring to the Canada World Youth volunteers.

"But (by going there) it's changed our lives. And despite the people's poverty, they believe they can change things and help themselves."