From Bali, For Change: Ni Kadek Putri's Journey Uniting Environment, Education, and Literacy

High volatility is likely to continue until the end of May.

Starting from a simple concern about the environment and education, Ni Kadek Putri chose to work directly with village communities and build a collective movement rooted in everyday habits. This woman from Bali is one of the first recipients of the Tanoto Foundation Fellowship program, with an inspiring journey.

For Putri, social change does not always come from grand gestures. Sometimes, change grows from simple things: reading books, talking with people, or teaching children to better understand the environment around them.

For the past six years, Putri has been actively working in the field, raising awareness about environmental issues since she was in college. The Bachelor of Education graduate, specializing in Biology, chose a path that connects her directly with communities, from assisting villages in building waste management systems to developing learning modules with educational institutions.

Even though she is now heavily involved in environmental issues, education remains an important part of her life.

“I still really enjoy teaching and meeting students,” she said.

Outside of her work as a field worker, Putri also has a great love for books. She even has a small dream of building a collective library for children in her home. For her, literacy is the key to understanding many issues, including the environment and sustainable development.

This is what makes her always include education and literacy in every social work she does.

Currently, Putri is assisting villages in Bali to build integrated waste management systems through a participatory approach. She is also actively developing teaching materials and learning modules with educational institutions.

Not only that, Putri also responds to various issues in her area through the #LocalizingSDGs campaign, a learning space that tries to ground the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the daily lives of the Balinese people.

According to her, people often feel that global issues are too far from their reality. In fact, many values of sustainability actually live in local traditions and habits that have been passed down through generations.

“The global narrative can actually be seen very closely through everyday habits. So, everyone has a role,” she said.

As a field worker, her daily life is filled with activities involving meeting many people. She works with village governments, community groups, communities, and schools to raise environmental awareness.

In her work, Putri also assists female leaders in building green leadership in their communities. Door-to-door education is part of the routine that she does almost every day.

The programs she runs often target schools. There, Putri tries to develop a more fun and literacy-based environmental learning approach.

“Combining environmental issues with literacy and numeracy? It’s possible. That’s what I’m working on,” she said with a laugh.

Putri’s journey in understanding education in a broader context began in 2024 when she learned about the Tanoto Foundation Fellowship through social media.

Her interest in educational issues made her see the fellowship as a learning space as well as an opportunity to build a network with young people from various regions.

She wants to see how the education ecosystem works on a national scale and how that experience can later be applied to her work at the grassroots level.

This opportunity then led her to meet eight other fellows and be placed in the Kalimantan region, which was Putri’s first experience of venturing far from Bali.

Even though it initially felt foreign, this experience turned out to be a valuable space for her to grow.

Moreover, the projects she coordinated involved many teachers in East Kalimantan, who she said were so warm and enthusiastic about teaching.

“I still remember their enthusiasm to serve,” she said.

However, the journey during the fellowship was not always easy. Putri admitted that she sometimes felt left behind compared to her colleagues, especially in her ability to read and process data.

Instead of getting caught up in feeling inferior, she chose to use this as a learning space. She actively discussed online with her friends, asked for help in learning data analysis, and even asked them to review the documents she worked on.

During the year she spent in the fellowship, the ability to make data-driven decisions became the most ingrained skill in her.

“I finally learned how to read data, analyze, and draw conclusions. That really helps me when I advocate with stakeholders,” she said.

For Putri, the fellowship felt different because it was not only focused on project achievements but also on human growth. The reflection process through journals that were routinely discussed together was a very memorable experience for her.

“What is being built is not only the project, but also the skills that can be carried until whenever,” she said.

One of the moments she remembers most is when she attended a seminar at Mulawarman University and met her idol, Gita Wirjawan.

“This is a jackpot bonus,” she said with a laugh.

Behind all the journeys she has taken, Putri believes that young people have great potential to create social change.

According to her, contributions to sustainable development do not always have to start with big actions. Many social movements actually start from simple concerns that then develop into collective movements.

“Interestingly, the process of creating social impact also shapes us. We learn empathy, compassion, and resilience,” she said.