More about LooLa

Apologies: this page is under construction and will be ready in a few days!

• LooLa in pictures:
  Here is our gallery with beautiful photos and videos of scenery, families, companies and schools [POINT to our gallery/video]
  Check our Facebook photo albums and share with over 8,000+ fans!
  Click our Instagram etc.
• The LooLa powerpoint presentation.
  Views, activities, community work, and eco info all in one colorful file!
  (Note: this 200 MB file does not display well on the browser, it really must be downloaded as a PPT; so after clicking the link below, please wait a while (could be up to a minute depending on the speed of your connection) and then please click the download button that appears on the right-top corner of the window that comes up).
  Download Here.
• Why work with LooLa?
  This document is focusing on education, but others may find it interesting too.
  It features our company’s background, our philosophy, our programs and activities, and a brief CV of our 50-odd full-time staff.
  Download Here.
• More on our signature CSR program, the Safe Water Gardens [link to safewatergardens.org]
• Our travel insurance page [with link]
• LooLa program proposal samples.
  This document is, again, chiefly targeting educational groups, but it gives a good general idea of our programs: get inspiration from seeing what other schools have done and what is possible (we offer fully customised trips!)
  Download Here.

 

LooLa and the UN SDGs:

The 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to transform our world:

GOAL 1: No Poverty
Our Safe Water Garden (SWG) project –safe sanitation for all Asian villagers by 2025, see the vision timeline attached below– contributes very significantly to poverty reduction, because they deliver a combined 10% of savings on household income through reduced medical costs, reduced number of sick days, and income from chili growing.

GOAL 2: Zero Hunger
More than one third of Indonesian kids suffers from stunted growth (a direct result from not having enough nutrition). There is a deep connection between sanitation and stunted growth, because if families have bad sanitation that results in diarrhoea for children, this means that children don’t keep the (already very limited) nutrients in their body, contributing to stunted growth.
Second, the SWG is doing a very good job in raising awareness of people that it is possible to grow their own food and and that it is easier than they commonly believe.
This elevated awareness will result directly in having more (healthy) food.

GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being
Health experts generally regard good sanitation as the biggest bang for the buck in terms of improving health.
Not only does the SWG stop diarrhoea, it also reduces mosquito population and hence Dengue and Malaria, and 20% of SWG recipients reports that their young children no longer have skin rash after they received an SWG (probably on account of having far less organics in the well as a result of the SWG).
The SWG thus contributes profoundly to SDG #3, also because the house no longer smells.
The (academically certified) survey data support our medical and social claims: 70% of SWG recipients say their diarrhoea has disappeared, 20% say their children’s skin rashes have disappeared, and large majorities say the insect and smell situation has improved. Well-being relative to the SWG is directly quantified as well: 90% of those who have a SWG say they feel respected by their community, vs 70% in a control group.
Having a kitchen sink (instead of having to do the dishes in the toilet) and having a nice-looking garden also significantly contribute to well-being, as more recent surveys confirm.

GOAL 4: Quality Education
Teaching people about the importance of good sanitation and healthy food is one of the key priorities of the Indonesian government.
Loola is actively working with Singapore-based schools, local schools, and local universities to finetune and amplify the message that comes with the SWG.
Guests can help in this project by conducting surveys amongst villagers, and facilitate discussions.

GOAL 5: Gender Equality
LooLa started mid 2019 with offering gender equality programs. Initially, they were chiefly dialogue sessions between Loola’s lady staff (who relate their journey towards gender equality) and our visiting students, but lately, we have found a great opportunity to combine women empowerment and fighting plastic pollution: guests first go out together with our female staff & villagers to collect plastic trash from the beach, and after collection, they then turn this trash jointly into highly fashionable hand bags, baskets, ornaments etc. These products can be sold (even to local markets!) at attractive profits, which means that garbage collection becomes a creative and profitable business benefiting women, not just financially, but also in terms of feeling economically independent and artistically creative, which benefits self-confidence. The energetic Singapore-based social enterprise “Seven Clean Seas”, meanwhile, has committed in Oct 2019 to buy these recycled plastic bags and sell them in Singapore, so it looks like these efforts will be sustained into the future.

The discussions between local women and our guests have now become a more or less natural part of this joint “turn-plastic-into-art” activity. Both guests and local people will discover that there are highly interesting overlaps in experiences but also some interesting specific cultural differences.
This will be a learning journey where all participants benefit equally, including the male participants.

GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
Guests could build 1 SWG per 10-15 participants, and they could easily build a few kitchen sinks. LooLa’s guests can also help us to conduct surveys.
On top of the sanitation systems, LooLa also aims to collect 100% of its water from rainwater in 2019.
Those rainwater harvesting systems are already in place but we shall start doing (online) monitoring in 2019 so we can easily track our success in this area.

GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
As of Sep 2019, Loola runs around 70% on green energy, but we are installing energy meters by Oct 2019 latest and expect to be 100% on solar power in 2019.
The results of our energy use will be displayed on big interactive screens in the canteen.
LooLa’s guests can easily get engaged in green energy programs by mapping out how much electricity we use, they can study Loola’s nifty and easy-to-copy eco-cooling systems and ask themselves to what extent they could apply the same at home (and they will discover that it’s much easier than people think!)

GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
By being more healthy and having less sick days, the 10% household savings resulting from owning an SWG gives an immediate boost to the economy.
LooLa’s guests could try to figure out where this extra money goes through surveys and interviews.
The other opportunity for decent work is promoted through our plastic-to-art programs (refer to goal 5) and also because some of our student groups are active in developing homestay tourism, a form of tourism that LooLa actively supports because we have found that many of LooLa’s guests like to stay a night or longer with local families.
Lastly, of course, LooLa’s staff –who did not have the benefit of high education– are fully empowered. They are empowered not just as running a tourism business autonomously, but also through running their own shop onsite at LooLa. Very excitingly, they are now becoming national consultants in the area of sanitation (notably Safe Water Gardens), teaching palm oil companies how to introduce SWGs, and the idea is that they will all become consultants in all the areas of sustainability described here.

GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Our overall target of 100 million SWG (all villagers in Indonesia and beyond) would be a massive infrastructure change.
The SWG is a spectacularly efficient innovation that improved an earlier UNICEF sanitation model. What makes this innovation so great is that it is accessible to everyone and even school children can build it –no special expertise is required.
Indonesia is already 98% electrified (as of Sep 2019), but the majority of people still do not have adequate sanitation. Fixing that in the next 5 years is a massive shot in the arm, from which national infrastructure will benefit, but also important industry sectors, since millions of ever-lasting plastic drums and pipes will have to be produced.

GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality
It used to be that, compared to city people, villagers didn’t have access to electricity and water and sanitation, which is a very obvious inequality.
The electricity part has been fixed in the last 10 years. The next 5 years should see equality in the sanitation situation.
With universal national access to education, medical care, electricity and sanitation, the inequality between rural people and urban people is set to disappear in Indonesia.

GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
Together with electricity, good schools and good local medical help (already present in most villages), the SWG will complete the revolution that makes rural communities self-sustainable.

GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
There’s few things so good as growing your own crops in the garden.
One of the extra features of the SWG is that, asides from being a great sanitation system, it also encourages people to realise that it is possible to grow their own crop and hence have access to healthy food, sustainably produced.

GOAL 13: Climate Action
LooLa’s guests are encouraged to make their trip to Loola a carbon-neutral one by planting mangrove trees.
LooLa works together with the local university in Bintan, UMRAH, to teach our guests how to plant the new mangroves and why it is important.
We can help the students calculate how much CO2 is offset by a single tree, and make them appreciate how much CO2 they emit through their daily actions.

GOAL 14: Life Below Water
By planting mangroves (see SDG #13), we are directly improving marine life because mangrove trees are important incubation zones for young marine animals.
Bintan’s university, UMRAH can educate our guests about this, also by doing marine surveys (doing species count).
Through a partnership with Singapore’s leading educational eco marine/dive partner, ORCA, we expect to further enhance this SDG in the near future.
See also SDG #15 below.

GOAL 15: Life on Land
LooLa has mapped out all major animals that we have around LooLa: birds, mammals, reptiles, crabs, shrimps, shells, and other marine life.
We have printed out booklets from these animals that guests can take along and our staff is able to tell everything our guests want to know about the lifestyles of these animals and how they relate to the human community.
We have found that displaying the existing animals on posters not only increases appreciation of wildlife amongst guests, but also amongst local people, who take pride in explaining things from a local perspective about the local wildlife, and hence become aware that the wildlife around them is special and worth preserving.

GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions
LooLa is chair of Bintan’s anti-corruption commission and LooLa’s staff will be very happy to share their experiences with an ever more democratic Indonesia and its free and vibrant press –quite a contrast with Singapore, as Indonesia is the undisputed democratic champion of SE Asia (which is not to say there are no challenges!)
The discussions about politics in Indonesia are open, passionate, free, and diverse, but with a general consensus that the result should be a more equal and just society for everybody, and a government that serves its people rather than the reverse.

GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal
The SWG project is a vibrant partnership between schools, universities, companies and passionate individuals, and each of these partners has actively helped –and continues to help– us reach the goal of 100 million SWGs by 2023, see screenshot below.