It’s been a year since you’ve won the prize. How are you? And how is Project Liquify going?
It’s been quite the journey, I would say. From the start of the project, I was super excited to continue Liquify.
My Iris Prize and Liquify journey has been quite amazing! With the Iris Prize, I was able to do so much more than before. For example, we have been able to do more book donations. Before I was going to classrooms by myself and would be in only about 1 to 2 schools a day and reach only 30 to 60 students. But now with the Iris Prize, we have been able to connect book donations with volunteers and get more books out. We’ve also added games and prizes for the kids. We are able to reach more schools expanding our reach from 200 students to over 1,000 in just a few months. We were able to donate over 100 books to 11 new schools. This is all over Bali and we were able to collaborate with over 100 volunteers, a lot of the volunteers are also youth. We have also worked with different organisations including The Green School Foundation and Bali Youth Parliament for Water.
Another example is our recharge wells. We are currently in the process of building 7 more recharge wells around Bali. So these are the big significant wells that are going to be placed in the schools, and government offices. They will be seen by the public and can be used for education on the impact of recharging groundwater, reducing floods and reducing water runoff. We are still in the process of creating a monitoring system for the wells to see how much water is moving into the wells and how much water is going back into the ground recharging our groundwater. We are in the process of prototyping three different types of sensors to monitor this but it’s taking longer than expected because it’s the first time it’s been done.
We’ve successfully launched our website together with the MakerChange Studio. This website displays all of our impacts, how many students we’ve engaged with and how many wells we’ve created. It also displays a map that you can interact with, which shows all the recharge wells we’ve installed together with IDEP Foundation and Politeknik Negeri Bali. There are about 50 recharge wells implemented so far. And it also displays all of the education programs we’ve done around Bali. Some of them already have pictures so when you click on them it shows a picture of the students and books we’ve donated.
Last but not least there is the Kintamani Project, where we directly impacted around 170 people in the Kintamani village.
Oh also, for my final presentation after graduating from Green School Bali I did it on Liquify and spreading awareness about the global Water Crisis. With this project we installed an extra rechargeable in the Green School. This is for educational purposes for visitors, students, teachers and even parents. The well is half acrylic and has lights inside so you can see inside the well when it’s raining. At night it glows! It’s straight out of Disney, it’s really cool.
That’s amazing, you are doing such incredible work! We had some of the Iris Project team and prize winners meet up in Bali the other week and it was really special to see what you’ve been up to in the Kintamani Village Project. What are some of your learnings from that project?
One of the main things I’ve learnt working on the Kintamani Project is how important it is to ask and do research. What does the village really need? I don’t want to just go to a community and give them a solution they don’t really need or know what it is. I don’t want to be the saviour. One of the main things I’ve learnt is that you need to work together with the community. One of the things we did instead of paying for the whole solution is we worked together with the villages and asked what their needs and problems are. And together we made a solution that would work best for them. We dug the pipes together and installed them. In Indonesia we call it “Gotong Royong” which means to accomplish something together, so that’s what we did, we Gotong Royong. So that’s the main thing I learned. You can’t just arrive somewhere and give a solution and expect it to work.
That’s really awesome. Thanks for sharing that Dipta. For the Iris Project capacity building, what offers have you found the most meaningful and what have you learnt from them?
I really enjoyed working with MakerChange and getting the social media toolkit and logo. I really enjoyed seeing these things come to life. I’ve always had a general idea of what I wanted it to look like but with the help from Maker Change, they made it really come to life. Also with the CoalitionWILD program we had to create a mindmap which I really enjoyed creating. It was on why I created Liquify and how it works. It really gave me an opportunity to step back for a second and reflect on what Liquify actually is, what it does and what some future plans could make it better. It gave me an opportunity to pause and think about the project fully.
How have you found the funding process? You also have a slightly different funding process as a minor, we have collaborated with a local organisation to serve as a fiscal sponsor. This partner organisation has been responsible for managing the financial grant, holding the funds, and providing financial support to you throughout the process. Have you found that it’s still been trust-based and you have control over those funds?
I think overall it was quite different than I expected but it wasn’t something new that I’ve done. So even though I had to check off the things that I bought for example and put in a system and take pictures of receipts. It was nothing new and I felt quite comfortable doing it. I still feel lucky and privileged to even be able to win the Iris Prize. I still feel it’s trust-based and overall it’s been a good experience and think it’s going pretty well.
It definitely looks like it’s going pretty well, it looks like you’re doing a really great job and you seem pretty confident and comfortable with dealing with it all which is pretty amazing. Can you speak about the mentorship program and your relationship with the Iris Project mentors? How did you find that process?
My mentors are great! We had calls every two weeks to a month and it’s a great way for me to also reflect and see how the project is going. For finances in Indonesia, Sumarni has really helped me look over agreements and check everything is aligned. And overall I think they really helped me out because I’m doing a project by myself and they could have a second and a third opinion on the project and see how things can move forward. So overall it feels really nice to be able to chat and call and have their support and help.
They also always have such positive things to say about you. What advice would you have for someone who is an aspiring young person wanting to be in the climate space or a potential prize winner?
I have two things. They’re kind of opposites to each other. One be yourself to stand out and two do your research to see what’s working. Don’t necessarily copy it but see what’s working, be yourself, uniquely and stand out. That’s as simple as I can put it. In this space, there are a lot of youth who want to do projects on climate change. How can you make yourself stand out?
That’s really solid advice. I like that. Finally what exciting things do you have that’s coming up for Liquify and yourself?
Everything’s going to be continuing, even though I am going to be in London. We’re planning to hire another person for Liquify, hand over the book donations, and partner up with the Bali Youth Parliament for water. I’m gonna be in London, they’re gonna be continuing the donations. It’s sad for me to be away from Liquify but at the same time, it needs to grow even without me. In terms of recharge wells, one of the most exciting projects is the recharge wells. We are doing 7 extra wells so the public can learn about it and recharge groundwater. Also hopefully we’ll be done with the sensors, it’s taking quite a while, but we really hope to have it before I go to London. We are planning to double the number of students we visited and by the end of 2024, we plan to engage over 2000 students and the 7 recharge wells we are installing we plan to install seven sensors.
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