Dr. Ating Foundation

Owen's class recently did a segment on "Saints and Sages".  One of the people they learned about was Dr. Ating, the Green School doctor.  He worked in Papau for over 12 years and is now starting a project in Sulawesi, a lesser known Indonesian island.  His work focuses on improving health in areas near national parks and areas of unique environmental resources and beauty.  Through improving health and doing eco-education he aims to conserve these areas.  He believes that by improving the quality of life for the locals there becomes less of a need to harvest the rain forests and degrade ecosystems.  At the same time he educates the locals on eco tourism and turns conservation into a road towards economic stability. Owen's class is currently raising money for the Sulawesi Project and as always Owen takes this very seriously.  If you are interested in supporting the project, please check out the website for the Dr. Ating Foundation, http://www.dratingfoundation.com 


The first phase of this project, a mobile health service team will visit villages along the margins of the Park and provide simple curative treatment and health education. This project intends to save the endangered species in the Lore Lindu National Park, Sulawesi, Indonesia — home of at least 227 bird species, 77 of them found nowhere else in the world, and of thousands of species of flora and other fauna. Realizing that rapid deforestation involves, partially or fully, the impoverished people living at the margin of the forest whose livelihood depends significantly on the harvesting the forest product, the project approach is to help these people achieve a better standard of living through improved health care and potential eco-tourism and sustainable forest product income. The team will also carry out an eradication program for schistosomiasis.  This program component will bring down morbidity and mortality rate and cut the family’s medical expense and workdays loss due to the sicknesses.

In the second phase of the project, an edu-ecotourism will be introduced with three aims: giving extra income to locals, financing the on-going costs of the health program initiated in the first phase of the project, and educating national and international students on conservation.

By addressing both the health care and livelihood objectives of local people, and linking the achievement of these aspirations to forest protection, this project hopes to pilot a successful model of local community engagement that could be replicated in other protected areas around Indonesia and the world.

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