Dare to Dream of Better Future
Novi with the vegetables on her head, carrying it all to be sold to the communities around the village
Novi is probably just 13 years old but her soul is definitely an old soul making her being very much wiser than her age. She is on her 8th grade now. Her home is in Timbang Lawang village, Bukit Lawang area, Bahorok district, North Sumatra province – Indonesia. This village is one of the buffer-zone area of Gunung Leuser National Park. It is not easy for her to be able to continue her study like other kids. Her father passed away when she was only 6 years old. Ever since, her mother is becoming a single mother with 6 children and Novi is the youngest. As her mother has no fixed jobs as her low educational background, she only works being a hard labor in the field if any jobs available and she collects palm oil sticks to make broomstick with the daily wages of less than 3 Euros per day. Seeing her mother works very hard to support their lives, Novi just can’t sit around. After school, she roams in the bushes around the village for foraging to collect anything to be sold like edible ferns, wild spinach and others. “I just can’t sit around to see how much my mother work very hard so that we can continue to live. Sometimes, just surviving seems hard enough for us, more over to be able to continue my education” said Novi with head down.
Novi was cleaning and packaging the raging fern she got after school.
To help her mother, Novi changes her clothes quickly after school and going inside of the bushes foraging to find wild vegetables to sell. Every day, she will sell different vegetable to be sold. It depends of what she can find around during particular season. After finding something, she will bring this big sack of wild vegetables and bring them home to be packed in. simple ways. She ties them with natural strings made from banana trees. Each of the vegetable will be sold even less than 1 cent. She carries this big bucket on her head loading all of the packed vegetables and walk for miles around the village selling the vegetables. “If I am lucky then all of my vegetables will be sold out. But fortune doesn’t come every day. If all of my vegetables are sold, I can about 1 Euro per day. I can save the money and use it for my education purposes” she said with smiles.
Novi’s school is located about 20 minutes by bus from her home. Every day, she needs 50 cents for her bus fare. For sure, it is not cheap for them especially with the wages of her mom with such low wages. “Sometimes I am afraid to have a dream. But my teachers in the education center of Nuraga Bhumi always supporting me to have a dream. I also get some scholarship support each month that I can use to support me going to school. It has been helping me a lot! It makes me believe that a poor village girl like me can have a dream to have better life one day” She said.
Novi is one of the 6 scholarship students in our education centre
Novi is only one from 75 kids we have in our education center working together with Nature for Change. She was born next to Leuser Ecosystem and she is the future protector of this amazing ecosystem that has Orangutan, Tiger, Elephant and Rhino co-exist together. The reality of Novi’s life is also resonating with majority indigenous and local people who lives next to the forest, far from privilege and struggling. We can’t talk about the sustainability of the forest without addressing one of the core problems; the welfare of women, children and other under-representative communities around. Education is a basic need for every human but it seems privilege for some people indeed. Please help us raising the future forest protectors and build better life for indigenous and local people in Gunung Leuser National Park by donating and supporting us on our PayPal here.
““I dare to have a dream and what I do now is to pursue it with every effort that I could do”
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