On May 15, 2020, Yani Nofri from West Sumatra, Indonesia, a The Indigenous Partnership (TIP) fellow from the last cycle, was accepted to join the 2020 Women’s Earth Alliance Indonesia Grassroots Accelerator, which will be held from June 15, 2020 onwards on an online platform.The program is an opportunity to gain the skills, tools, knowledge, and networks that one needs to accelerate a project of impact at the foundation levels of community.
It is an open platform where women leaders will be prepared to grow or scale their environmental and climate initiatives. The acceptance letter encouraged Yani with words stating, “You’ve already driven impact through your project/initiative and are well-positioned to take it to the next level, drawing on the skills, alliances, expanded audience, and range of resources offered by this unique national Accelerator”.
Nofri, along with other women participants will have to undergo online training for four months (eight-10 hours) per week. On April 21, women across Indonesia celebrated the Kartini Day, a day that commemorates one of Indonesia’s women heroes and icons of women empowerment. On the special day, 158 women from 28 provinces across Indonesia applied for the 2020 Indonesia Grassroots Accelerator, and 36 have been selected to join the training.
The topics that will be covered in the online workshop include climate resiliency planning, alliance-coalition, and movement building. It also includes designing and amplifying an environmental policy platform, self and community care resiliency, advocacy, policy and campaigning skills, communication and advocacy strategies, building a revenue stream, pitching and fundraising for long term sustainability, and impact measurement, evaluation and learning.
Nofri belongs to the Minangkabau matriarchal community and is the Program Coordinator and founder of Cahaya Maritime Foundation (CAMAR), an NGO in West Sumatra that works to empower the community to actively contribute on sustainable management of natural resources based on local wisdom. She aims to scale up Youth Education Program related to Coastal community empowerment, Agro-biodiversity and Food Sovereignty issues through existing connection with the local government and private sector in focus districts and West Sumatra provincial level. As a former fellow of the Indigenous Youth Fellowship Programme by TIP, Yani aims to accelerate the main goal of TIP, which is to strengthen the Indigenous Food Community Alliance.
“Being a member of women grassroot accelerator Indonesia will increase my capacity to better plan and manage my organization in the future. I hope I could enrich the organization activity with resources and structure impact measurement, learning from other women leaders’ experiences and develop my networking skills. I would also hope that I can share my knowledge and experience with other women leaders specially my knowledge related to Indigenous Food System Study that I learned during my fellowship in 2019 with TIP”, expressed Yani.