INTERVIEW WITH LORNA

In September 2003, Peter Martin talked with Lorna Dowson-Collins, Susila Dharma (Britain)'s fundraiser for Indonesia.

Lorna, in a couple of days, you will be going to Kalimantan. Why?

Twelve years after university, with little sense of direction, I had no passion for the work I was doing, but it balanced with being a mum. Then I attended a course on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). We were asked to draw our vision. I found myself drawing lots of circles within a big circle. Each small circle represented a person, as I explained my picture to the group, it became clear to me that the whole represented people coming from multi-disciplinary backgrounds to create new ways of thinking and working together.

Shortly after this, I was invited to work with a consultancy specialising in NLP. During a visit to a voluntary project in Indonesia, I went to a conference on PRA (Participative Rural Appraisal) – which had a similarly participative approach to NLP, except this was focused on social development.

Back in England with a colleague I wrote a proposal which ODA (now DFID - Department for International Development) accepted. This was great for me – as a consultant working in companies I had focused on accelerated learning, creating an open space environment to develop potential, so this project provided a chance to start from scratch and create the right type of environment for personal and social development. The project started with a PRA course which involved 20 days of training – learning and action rolled into one, working with the village community to identify resources, hopes etc. We then recruited two of the participants to become our fieldworkers.

Kalimantan is one of the islands that make up Indonesia. It has the second largest rainforest in the world. Many people in the West had good intentions and wanted to help the situation in Kalimantan but tended to have an expert, top-down based approach which wasn't conducive to partnership. One project set up a carpenter’s shop and the villagers ran off with the tools and the profits – they didn’t feel a sense of ownership for the project.

Under the scheme provided by ODA we had to find joint funding. Mansur Geiger was leading a junior mining exploration company. He had befriended the Dayaks – the indigenous population of the rainforest - and this had raised questions in his mind about what could happen to them if, say, diamonds were found, and how development might affect them. Some of his staff followed the PRA training and were so enthused by the process that Mansur worked with them to set up a foundation and provided most of the remaining funding.

Through this voluntary work, I was referred to do some work for DFID in Indonesia to set up a tripartite management structure between the local forest dwelling communities, the logging companies and the government in order to sustainably manage the rainforest. During this time there was enormous change in Indonesia – Suharto went, there were the El Nino forest fires – chaos and change. Some islands wanted to go their own way, to take responsibility for their own government. The Dayaks, constrained by the activities of the big logging companies and so-called ‘Nature Reserves’, had lost their way. After 25 years of dictatorship, people had become used to being told what to do. This small project is beginning to take effect.

We have been working ‘bottom up’ and now there is an opportunity, through the Autonomy and Democracy Process taking place in Indonesia, to influence the government towards participative democracy. In June, the government put forward an initiative called the Participative Planning Forum – an idea which currently is an empty structure that needs training and support to become an effective mechanism for change - a potential voice for the rural communities to influence policy. People have been disempowered for so long and don't trust the government. The reason I am going is to facilitate local people, businesses, and NGOs to work together and to help to get this structure to work.

Will you miss your work here in the UK?

Until I started doing this full-time about a year ago, working on organisational change in corporations was my main work. I enjoy that and intend to continue in the field, but at this moment my focus is working with the sweeping change taking place in the country that I love and grew up in.

All photos in this issue with thanks to Lorna Dowson-Collins, who talked with Peter Martin in September 2003.

Read more about the sustainable livelihoods project in  Kalimantan.