Semoya is a sub-village located in Berbah municipality, Yogyakarta Province. Most of the years, they have been organizing international workcamp with local NGO since 2006. They started post-disaster workcamp in 2007. When 80 % of the building was destroyed due to a huge earthquake in 2006. Beginning with some 10 Japanese volunteers, we supported the local community to rebuild their village. The local partners who are the local leaders of this area found the activity involves both local and international volunteers and has a positive impact especially for the local youth to be more confident in interacting with foreigners.

After years of dedication, we needed to stop our program in this area in 2015. The planning to revive the international volunteering program in this area becomes harder when it has to be fully stopped due to the pandemic from 2019 to 2022. The local contact Pak Jono, who is also the leader of the local farmer’s community, and a local leader in this district tried to reach us in the last quarter of 2024. Due to the declining number of volunteers globally, we need to admit that we didn’t receive any volunteers for the first year. But we didn’t give up on waiting until someone answered our call finally on January 2025.

“Our workcamp has to be organized despite anything!” Our local partner told us in January 2025. In the end, we received only two volunteers (one from Semarang, Indonesia, and one from Hong Kong). Most of the time, we have limitations on the number of volunteers in a camp due to financial issues, but we found another strategy to keep going with our plans by collaborating with the local community.

This year’s workcamp in Semoya is different. Since its establishment in April 2017, our organization has been mainly concerned with sustainable farming issues. This time, it focuses on building an organic farm in this neighborhood. Sany Mardlotillah, the founder of our organization, is in charge of the garden-making project and is the camp leader for the volunteers.

The workcamp aimed to support local community farms. Several spots in the neighborhood have community gardens and create a center of eco-farming education centers in this region. This is still a long way to go in developing this project along with the local community. However, hosting an international group has charged their new motivation to make them aware of applying sustainable farming practices step by step.

They cooperated with a local school named SD Muhammdiyah Semoya. They used to host international volunteering programs focused on education. The students from 1st – 6th grade helped volunteer to make plant beds, clean shrubs, pick up plastic garbage surrounding the garden, and make simple composting. We made key holder design plant beds, hügle beds, took cow manure, and covered up the beds with top soils. Every Tuesday to Friday they came to the garden every 7:30 till 10:00 am.

Workcamp can be a space to learn in two ways. As a local partner been exposed to different cultures and new perspectives, also an international volunteer who came to a workcamp. Izel Ramirez (Hong Kong Volunteer) said “It’s surprising to learn that cow manure can be used to clean the house. I learned about the e most basic plant beds & making fertilizer by first logging chopped-up banana trees, cow manure, soil, dry straw, or lemongrass. Pouring microbes mixed into it would speed up the process”.

At the end of the camp, volunteers organized a human library project with the school. This is the first time we have tried a human library project at the primary school. The idea was to make the student aware of another culture and grow their curiosity to explore their ideas for their future. This time we had two books: Izel from Hong Kong and Iqbal from Lampung, Sumatra Island. The human library is when volunteers experience a book from students. The student also experiences hearing about other experiences and stories from another side of the world directly from the source.

Our workcamp ended with a very nice dinner with our local host and local partners. Izel, our Hong Kong volunteer, decided to cook dumplings for all of us. Meanwhile, the Indonesian group, along with the host family, prepared some Indonesian dishes and chicken satay. We are happy that all of us could comprehend all situations and differences despite some other challenges. But we all believe this is a good start to motivating the local community to dream once again, especially to be a more ecologically friendly farmers community in the future.