Earlier this month CTC hosted a visit from Marine Buddies to our CTC Center for Marine Conservation. Marine Buddies is a community group that campaigns on marine issues and engages the wider community to take part in marine conservation. Their visit to CTC is part of their Youth Summer program in Bali. They visited various organizations, including CTC, to learn and be inspired by various programs that they can adapt to engage a wider audience to play a role in taking care of the marine environment.  

A total of 32 youth from Marine Buddies joined the visit to CTC Center for Marine Conservation. They came from all different parts of Indonesia, including Surabaya, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Kupang, Labuan Bajo, Ambon, Jayapura, Balikpapan, Jambi, and Bali. During the visit, we took them on a tour around our center and played a fishing game on our Nautilus Pond. The fishing game focuses on developing understanding of the general concept of sustainable fishing. The goal of the players is to be able to balance economic, social, and ecological factors in order to fish sustainably.

CTC’s Nusa Penida Project Coordinator, Evi Ihsan, presented on community engagement efforts within CTC’s project in Nusa Penida during the discussion session. Gita Khrisna, one of the participants from Marine Buddies mentioned that he learned a lot about CTC’s best practices in interacting with the local community and engaged them in marine conservation programs. “We hope that this will be our provision to make future projects with the community.” added Gita.

Photo by Evi Ihsan/CTC & Adam Putra/CTC