Biru Peduli was initiated by Ahmad Yuniarto, who started to run a personally funded relief effort with his brother two days after the May 29 earthquake struck Yogyakarta and surrounding areas. Sareyan village, around 30 km away, was chosen as the first adopted village due to its small size, remoteness, positive attitude of the villagers and the fact that no relief program had reached them at that time. Also, no member of Ahmad Yuniarto's family resides there, hence no conflict of interest.
The program has been expanding thanks to positive support and donations from a network of caring friends, employees and ex-employees of Schlumberger. We will add target villages/schools to our program as we progress.
In the beginning, this was purely an informal relief effort, with no name or form. Due to the expansion of support from the network of friends, and difficulties working on the ground with no identity, we decided to name the community Biru Peduli (literally means Blue Cares in Indonesian) on 12 June 2006. One important fact remains: Biru Peduli is still an informal, non-profit voluntary community.
We are currently working in the villages of Sareyan, Jombor Plumutan, Watu, and Mulyodadi. All are in the Bantul regency, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Biru Peduli is run by a very lean non-formal volunteer community with almost no overhead. Following are our main volunteers:
- Iqbal Wasistoadi (based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia) runs day-to-day activities on the ground, from procuring materials to support the villages and delivering the goods, to being friends with people in our adopted villages; co-ordinating Transition House construction, identification and home-visit verification for Adopt-a-Student. In short, with the help of 2 volunteer students (Garda and Nanang) and a temporary rented car, Iqbal makes things happen in our adopted villages.
- Kamal Jansen (currently based in Perth, Western Australia) looks after the Biru Peduli website as webmaster and takes care of web-related matters. Kamal is currently co-ordinating the activities and fundraising efforts. He is responsible for setting up the PayPal facility through the website to ease donation from friends of Biru Peduli. The contents of the BiruPeduli website are the result of contributions from other volunteers.
- Mella Muchlis (based in Jakarta, Indonesia) supports the PR side of the activities: newsletters, communications and graphic designs. She is the designer of Biru Peduli's logo and graphics.
- Ahmad Yuniarto (currently based in Douala, Cameroon) was directly responsible for general co-ordination, communication, and fund raising. He was also the founder of the Biru Peduli community. The name "Biru Peduli" was coined by him. He is currently stepping back as Biru Peduli Co-ordinator and Kamal Jansen has taken up the role.
Biru Peduli's program is evolving from buidling transition houses in the villages to supporting education in the villages. Although there is still a lot to be done in the villages, in terms of physical reconstruction, we believe that our long-term impact on the community can be achieved through the education of the people. Hence, Biru Peduli started the Adopt-A-Student program.
Currently (May 2007), we have adopted fifty (50) junior high school students (called SMP in Indonesia). With the continuous support from our friends, we expect to expand our Adoption to more students. Iqbal has been talking to schools and personally visiting the villages to interview and choose the students who are in need of support. We prioritize our support to those in high risk of dropping out from school due to lack of funding from their family because Biru Peduli believes that every child has a right to basic education.
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