Young Ecopreneur Novia Fadhilla Sari (Nove) lived in East Java, Indonesia. She helped her father to plant some kinds of trees such as Tectona grandis and Swietenia Mahagoni when she was child and is now a forestry student, has hiked the hills at the best of Mount Merapi and Lawu, and has ever ridden a bicycle together with her friends for more than 30 km!
Nove, together with her team run a business that focuses on creative wood industry named kayonara (kayon = wood and nara = the eternal soul in the nature). They are trying to apply a sustainability concept which has 3 pillars to be balanced (economic, social and environment). Not only do they use recycled material to be processed as up-cycled products but they also try to learn the best way to manage wood material.
Since May 2015, kayonara (a business that creates wood product to raise the people’s behavior in environmental care) have had a collaborative project with Prof. Cahyono Agus (M.Sc), a lecture at Gadjah Mada University. Together they have made a research proposal and their idea has passed the selection to be one of the projects of Education for Sustainable Development.
Currently, Nove manages this program with her team. The objective of the program is to empower the capacity of individuals, communities and institutions to manage the local resources such as wood material and its waste wood resource, to be a material of creative wood industry that is eco-friendly, effective and efficient for a better life, welfare and sustainable living for the community.
A few months ago (July- August, 2015), Nove had a final assessment from her university. She did community service in a rural area for two months, which gave her a new perspective. She realized that village has a great potential to be a sustainable and self sufficient community. She realized too that there is a gap between rural and urban areas. She then told her friends about it, discussed with them and finally they together made a team.
The team, from various universities and backgrounds agreed to make a website and an application, called Baladesa, in playstore to help villages across Indonesia. Baladesa is a Crowdsourcing platform for village revitalization. They are trying to connect with ABCG (Academic, Business, Community and Government) to develop and empower Indonesian villages.
Nove believes that a country cannot go forward if the development is carried out only in urban areas, while there is a gap between rural and urban development.
Though the villages, with all their resources (material & human), have a great potential to become self-sufficient and sustainable communities, it is unfortunate when their state worsens as they are abandoned by village dwellers/ planners.
Therefore, Baladesa wants to be a bridge between the volunteers with concern for the village needs and village dwellers/ planners. There are more than 4,000 villages in Indonesia. Crowd-sourcing for village revitalization tries to address the needs of the contemporary sciences to develop the village by harnessing the availability of citizen groups with special interest as a necessity. It is a platform that bridges the projects initiated in the village with volunteers to those who want to contribute to a rural development project that will be/ are being executed, a site where everyone can take a part in village revitalization for a better Indonesia.
Nove realizes that that her experiences aren’t enough if she want to gives more contribution to the environmental sector in the future. She has to gain more than average experience, and being part of Youth in Landscape Initiative 2015 at Global Landscape Forum held by CIFOR is a great chance to increase her knowledge and broaden her network for a bigger impact – she hopes.
She is now the CEO at Kayonara (Creative Wood Industry) and Baladesa (a crowd-sourcing for village revitalization). Her work areas are Education, Youth and Community empowerment, Business Development and Teamwork Coordination.
Novia Fadhilla Sari is one of the 10 young champions who will work on the “Education” Landscape challenge with Youth program’s partner: Wageningen UR.
Learn more about the Global Landscapes Forum’s Youth program, meet our 50 youth champions and discover the 5 Landscapes challenges they will take up, in December, in Paris.
This youth innovator is supported by 
