I recently returned from a trip to Asia to document the work of a remarkable NGO, World Neighbors (WN). In 13 countries around the world, WN focuses on training and educating communities to find lasting solutions to the challenges they face — hunger, poverty and disease — rather than giving them food, money or constructing buildings.They ask marginalized farmers in isolated villages how they want to improve their lives, and then show them how to use better agricultural techniques, how to form savings and credit groups, and how to develop better health and hygiene. This ten minute film, which I shot in Lombok, Indonesia focusses on farmers adapting to climate change. Amaq Atun is a farmer who is adapting to the changing patterns of rainfall by avoiding rice and planting dry weather crops instead like cassava and sorghum. In the village of Kokok Pedek, the community mobilized to share their land in order to build an evacuation road for the next time they are hit with a flood from heavy rainfall. In the final section of the 10 minute film, we meet Amini, a mother of three and an accomplished entrepreneur, who turned her business idea for selling banana chips into a major enterprise on the island. These stories of adaptation and enterprise are an inspirational look at communities growing through change and helping each other.
Originally published at medium.com