UNAIR NEWS – To celebrate Earth Day on April 22, American Corner Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR) in collaboration Young South East Asia Leadership Initiative (YSEALI) invited students to compete in contributing creative ideas. National competition, Youth Ecopreneurship Challenge (YEC) was followed by students from many universities.

YEC was action plan competition on ecopreneurship with many events. There were talk show, Focus Group Discussion(FGD), a visit to green and clean village and ended with action plan elaboration of all participating teams. This time, they were invited to visit green and clean village, Jambangan Surabaya on Saturday April 30.

Healthy Village Jambangan

Jambangan village has been named as green and clean village many times, either at regional or national level. The inhabitants actually worked hard together to realize a village which its people consistently taking care of their health, safety and environmental balance. The village has been improving since 2002.

“Now, we add and we manage. We have had main priorities, to use single window working unit. All has been managed well with it. All for Jambangan improvement,” said Yulia Ratna, environmental activist in Jambangan.

There are many names given to Jambangan, such as nurturing village, healthy village, creative and innovative village. It has been able to get Kalpataru from Indonesian Ministry of Environment in 2008, The Best Green and Clean in 2013. The village has got Upakarti too for service and pioneering in small and handycraft industry. This is what makes other villages motivated.

In a week the village can receive visits for three times. Many visits come from outside Java, such as from Banjarmasin, Kalimantan to Papua. The visitors were mostly the members of PKK or village management staff.

In Jambangan, the locals empower the environment, from urban farming, garbage bank, handycraft from recycled material, to herbal food and drink production.

“All these are aimed to empower the locals economy,” said Yulia.

Innovation is indispensable. It should always be done to achieve healthy environment which keeps developing.

“Hopefully, every youngsters now can help us resound the importance of Earth to be saved as if only us doing it, it won’t be continuously done,” she added.

YEC was closed with action plan elaboration from 12 participants selected . The winner this time was Gubuk Organik. It is a business which moves on ecososiopreneur. The main objective of it is to encourage the people to live healthily by consuming organic vegetables.

“Gubuk organik has been running for a while. They have good management as they have made approach to large corporations. Furthermore, we also judge them from the initial assessment. We saw they had innovative idea, good management, community empowering also with clear implementation,” said Agung B. Kristiawan as one of the judges in YEC. (*)

Author : Binti Q. Masruroh
Editor : Dilan Salsabila