As reported in early 2020:

• The training room accommodation at the Sukamulya Demonstration Site has been a real success and has been a full house all year, welcoming both local and international volunteers from January until December. It’s a two-way street, volunteers lend their hand day-to-day on site and learn by doing along the way. We have had 13 volunteers stay from Yogyakarta, Bandung and Bali, as well as internationally from Germany, the Netherlands,Yemen, Australia, Singapore and Switzerland.

• Since the implementation of the environmental school curriculum early 2019 in the BCU school kitchen garden, the space is buzzing with bees and excited children who almost knock over staff to get to the garden in break times. A recent evaluation found that the children find it refreshing learning in a practical way about the garden, the forest and they now have a sense of ownership in the garden.

• Working in collaboration with Fairventures Worldwide as part of the One Million Tree project, we re-negotiated the Vermicompost contract to include a high performance wood chipper (worth approx. $3500USD) for YPK to help with the intensive labour process of produce the vermicompost, in exchange for in-kind professional consultation to the German organization on their new production of Vermicompost in the remote location of Gunung Mas and as well as vermicompost training in 2020 with indigenous farmers.

• We were very humbled and grateful to have been chosen as a runner-up winner of the Permaculture UK Magazine Prize out of over 150 entries. The prize is decided on by a distinguished panel of judges and aims to showcase the very best examples of ecological, social and economical regenerative permaculture projects in the world.

• Susila Dharma Canada’s CAN$4000 contribution towards YPK’s 2019 budget were spent on supporting core staff, as well as training room renovations and farm-site costs.