Being appointed as regional ambassador makes 2014 becomes my first time for getting involved in environmental activities. At that year, I was so blind to environmental activities therefore, I looked for a nearby environmental organization, where I can join and learn a lot from there. Then, it is a sweet destiny because I finally have found, a unique organization named Palembang Berkebun.

Palembang Berkebun as regional environmental organization is a part of Indonesia Berkebun, a national scale movement to persuade society for empowering unproductive land around. Everybody regardless age, occupation and gender can join as the member as long as they show their strong intention to participate. Once of a week, they gather and farm on some plantations. The plantations are usually unproductive land inside the city.

At the end of December 2014, after looking for some information through internet and social media, I decided to join and informed my friend to come together. The difficulties for finding the location did not eliminate our strong intention to show up. Some hesitation was haunting us when we arrived on the location.  We saw nobody and really worried about the validity of information we got from internet. Fortunately, thanks God, a member arrived on the location and we became happy.

Our first activity was preparing the equipment and ourselves. It is important to use anti mosquito lotion because no more than 5 seconds, a horde of mosquito will assault you in every part of your body and robe your blood. Then, even if it is not a compulsory, it?s better to bring some food and drink along with. Yup, doing farming plus morning sunlight makes you prone to dehydration. After that, we weeded the plantation and cultivated some areas for spreading vegetable seeds.

Based on my inquisitive questions and what I have done with this organization, I believe Palembang Berkebun is fun and educative. The leader is very welcome to give me every answer I demand about Palembang Berkebun. She told me that Palembang Berkebun not only does farming every week, but periodically, they do campaign and train society to plant the healthy and organic vegetable. Sometimes, when they do a big harvest, they suddenly open sunday market in public place to sell the vegetable. They also give some education to members including myself. I felt happy and it was absolutely a new experience.

I have come three times and I have an idea to team up as Tunza – Eco Ambassador for doing a social eco project and for campaigning to society to increase environmental awareness and knowledge. As we know that, I?ve ever mentioned several times in my previous reports that Palembang, my city, is a place where its citizens do not really care to environment. It is very different with other cities or if it is compared with your city, environmental project or environmental activities is very rare.