Daniel and Salaar Compass Video link – https://youtu.be/Nv970oRytJs

(NATURE)

1. What did I learn about “Living in Bintan” by interviewing different stakeholders using different Compass perspectives?

– Based on my group’s compass perspective (nature), I learned that the majority of stakeholders strongly value nature due to many different reasons. One of the main reasons is that the villagers live in and with nature, meaning that nature is their life and culture. Because of this, they try their best to preserve the nature by starting campaigns or taking actions in order to aware the villagers about the importance of nature and to also protect the nature from human wastes and other harmful materials. The most recent example of this in Bintan was the construction of resorts in Bintan. One of the stakeholders talked about how the resort company cut down most of the trees in that region (which the villagers did not want but the company did not comply), resulting in the cessation of the construction. From this example, I understood the perspectives of both the villagers and the company and realised the importance of incorporating all the compass perspectives rather than focusing on a specific perspective. In addition, regardless of the economy and literacy rate of Indonesia (specifically Bintan), the majority of the villagers were happy, which allowed me to understand that the economy is not the only factor that determines the happiness.

2. Why was it important to go through this process?
– Interviewing the stakeholders and learning about their perspectives (as well as 4 Compass perspectives) allowed us to come up with more accurate and detailed action plans. This is because by understanding the perspectives of the villagers instead of our own perspective (from the foreign point of view), we would be able to come up with the action plan based on the villagers’ perspective and their needs as we are not the people who can fully understand the living style of Bintan. By interviewing some of the villagers (Sialang) and the TIF staffs, we were able to find out what was going on in Bintan, such as recent exposure to modern technology (electricity, phones, and etc.) and the villagers’ perspectives in terms of resorts/hotels coming to Bintan. Additionally, we found out that the majority of the people in the village not only realize the problems regarding the nature (trash, use of harmful materials/chemicals in fishing, and etc.), but also try to solve the problems. It was important to go through this process before creating the action plan because we were able to look into the problems through the lens of the villagers, resulting in clear understanding of the problems and the needs.

3. When presenting your Compass perspective, what did you do well? What could you improve on?
– I believe that my partner and I did well on creating the graph for all of the points we came out with. The points we had regarding the nature compass perspective were about the actions the village is taking in order to prevent further negative consequences, such as restriction on usage of big nets, harmful chemicals, and etc. Not only did we discuss thoroughly to create the graphs, but we also talked to some of the TIF staffs to get a clear understanding of the trend. For example, regarding the point about fishing, I was not sure since when the village started to avoid the usage of big nets and chemicals, but some of the TIF staffs informed me that the fishermen began to avoid using big nets/chemicals since approximately 20 years ago. This helped us create an accurate representation of the trends, and hence supporting the claims we are making. In terms of the presentation skills, I believe I did well on using body language to emphasize certain words or graphs for more clear understanding of the audience. For instance, pointing at the graphs could have allowed the audience to easily comprehend the context as they know which graph I am referring to. However, my presentation could have been improved if I had more eye contact (meaning looking at the camera instead of the poster) to evidently deliver the presentation with confidence, hence resulting in deeper understanding of the ‘nature’ compass perspective. Additionally, more practice of what I was going to say during the presentation could have prevented me from stuttering or perhaps a short silence as I would have clear understanding of what the presentation should be about.