SAWBO is proud to present the seventh in a series of spotlight portraits highlighting the work of some of our collaborators around the world.  They all have unique experiences and innovative uses of our animations, and we are happy to have the opportunity to show the positive work that they all have been doing in different corners of the globe.

As always, please feel free to share your suggestions with us at animations@illinois.edu. 

JUAN NATHANIEL

FARMER’S UNION INDONESIA

My name is Juan Nathaniel and I am the chairman of the Farmer’s Union Indonesia. Our organization is based in Indonesia, a country which is abundant in natural resources. Unfortunately, due to a lack of education, our community has not been able to make the most of these resources. Our organization hopes to change that. Our main goal is to solve the gaps of education that exist in the community. To do this, we began to translate Scientific Animations Without Borders’ (SAWBO) educational videos into Bahasa, an Indonesian language, so that we would be able to distribute them to local rural farmers and use them to teach the importance of sustainability and efficiency within agriculture.

I discovered SAWBO after taking an online course about postharvest loss. In that course I watched an introductory video of SAWBO explaining its work creating animated educational videos to help improve as many communities as possible worldwide. I was extremely motivated about their project and became passionate about the possibility of being able to do the same thing in my country. I started to work with SAWBO at the beginning of 2015, translating animations in Bahasa and sharing them with my community.

The animations have been well accepted in our community. Since we brought the animations to the community, we have seen people using their cellphones to watch and share them. Although the poorest farmers in Indonesia do not have access to the Internet, those who are able to access these videos through cellphones are able to share animations with those who are not able to directly. After a month of partnership with SAWBO, I have realized that physical interactions with the potential audience should always be present in order to obtain the best results. Because of this, I'm planning to conduct seminars, lessons in schools, and presentations with farming organizations and farmers themselves about some of the innovations conveyed through SAWBO's videos.

Currently, the impact of SAWBO animations in my community can be viewed through the Farmer’s Union Indonesia website. Whenever I linked a SAWBO video on this site, the average impact would be around 1000 views over the span of one week. I’m aware that these numbers don't necessarily mean a life-changing effect to all of these viewers, but it surely educates and allows them to share this information with their immediate community and with those who need them.

I have always wanted to collaborate with SAWBO in ways other than just translating and dubbing videos. I hope that Farmer’s Union Indonesia and SAWBO can work together in the near future to produce an animation about the avian bird flu, one of the deadliest and most prevalent viruses in our country.