ISF wrapped up its 4-week visit to Indonesia with productive activities for learning further about climate impacts on inclusive WASH in Manggarai, reflecting upon and analysing our findings alongside Plan Indonesia, and communicating our findings to local stakeholders. This last portion of the visit lasted from 26 August to 5 September, finishing with a very well attended Seminar at a local university (read more about this below). We are returning to Sydney with a lot of exciting learnings to work with to better inform how inclusive WASH programming can reflect climate change considerations.
ISF and Plan Indonesia visited a third rural community in Manggarai in which we refined activities that we trialled with previous communities and tried out a few more. Community members impressed on us their insights on how climate affects water and sanitation access for women, men and people with disabilities, and were keen to design local solutions to challenges they face.
Having experienced and learned so much from the three communities that hosted us, ISF and Plan Indonesia staff turned to reflecting on all that we learned and how our newly acquired knowledge can be used to strengthen Plan Indonesia’s Water for Women program. We collaboratively analysed each activity we implemented, highlighted our key lessons learned, and discussed how Plan Indonesia can apply what we learned in their program. The result was a co-designed outline of a guidance note, which will be fully developed in the coming weeks, on how considerations of climate change impacts can be integrated into Plan Indonesia’s programming.
To conclude our trip, ISF staff and Research Consultant Fransiska Sugi, held a Seminar at the St Paul Catholic University of Indonesia in Ruteng. During the Seminar, we presented preliminary findings of our research to over 60 attendees from local government, local NGOs, and students/staff. We were delighted to receive and discuss numerous interesting questions from a very engaged audience. For example a student inquired about what long-term solutions are needed to address climate change beyond making near term changes, and an academic asked how our social analysis approach and understanding of local culture and values can strengthen approaches to assessing climate change impacts. Another participant confirmed our analysis with the findings from their own study that women are more affected by water and sanitation issues in Manggarai.
We are looking forward to developing multiple outputs with Plan Indonesia that will detail our learnings. These will appear on this website, so stay tuned. In the meantime, ISF is also preparing its next trip to Timor-Leste with WaterAid. We can’t wait to see what else we will learn about climate change and inclusive WASH in a new country context and with a new Water for Women program!