Funding

1. Opening Hook

High in the mountains of Aceh, Indonesia, a coffee-farming community is still recovering from a disaster that changed everything.

In November 2025, torrential rains triggered floods and landslides across Aceh province, killing more than 350 people and destroying homes, roads, and farmland. Bener Meriah and Aceh Tengah — the highland districts that grow the world-renowned Gayo coffee — were named among the six hardest-hit areas.

This summer, a team of Korean university students is traveling to those same hillsides — not to visit, but to help rebuild.

 

2. The Problem

The Gayo highlands are steep, volcanic, and increasingly battered by extreme rainfall — a combination that makes landslides a recurring threat. For the small-scale coffee farmers who make up most of the local economy, each disaster means lost topsoil, damaged crops, and unstable income. For local children, it means schools operating out of temporary buildings and growing up with a firsthand, often frightening, understanding of a changing climate.

Climate and environmental education for kids, and hands-on land recovery work for farmers, are both urgently needed — but under-resourced. Local efforts have started, but they remain limited to a handful of villages and cannot reach the whole region alone.

 

3. Our Program

Roots of Resilience sends 30 Korean university volunteers to Takengon, Aceh for a 12-night, 14-day program built around three local partners: Koperasi Kopi Wanita Gayo (a women's coffee cooperative supporting roughly 500 farmers across 14 villages), three local elementary schools serving 283 children, and Indonesian university students studying agriculture.

Together, they will run climate and environmental education for children, plant trees and stabilize soil on landslide-damaged farmland, and exchange ideas with Indonesian university students on sustainable agriculture — turning a single trip into a lasting partnership between two countries.

 

4. What We'll Actually Do

• Climate & Environment Education (36 hours) — lessons on climate change, recycling, and sustainable farming for 283 elementary school children, using play, art, and hands-on activities
• Landslide Recovery (part of the above) — soil stabilization and planting 2–3 species of shade and coffee tree seedlings on farmland damaged by the 2025 landslides
• Community Clean-Up (6 hours) — plogging and clean-up around shared village facilities still recovering from flood debris
• Cultural Exchange (3 hours) — a shared celebration of Korean and Acehnese culture with local residents
• Global Program (12 hours) — site visits, discussions, and a joint results presentation with agriculture students from North Sumatra University and Gajah Putih University

 

5. Why This Matters

Indonesia's national development plan lists climate resilience, sustainable agriculture, and disaster recovery in vulnerable rural regions as top priorities. This program directly supports all three — while giving Korean students hands-on experience applying their studies in climate, environment, agriculture, and education to a real community need.

It's designed to leave something behind: teaching materials handed over to local schools, seedlings that a second team will return to monitor and expand in January 2027, and a growing partnership between Korean and Indonesian students that continues long after the volunteers fly home.

 

6. Where Your Funding Goes

Use of Funds	Allocation	Amount
In-country program costs (lodging, meals, local transport, interpreters)	73%	$18,250
Pre-departure training & domestic activities	19%	$4,750
Program administration	8%	$2,000

 

7. Our Team

This program is organized by Kijami Table, a Korean social enterprise working since 2017 to address development challenges through low-carbon coffee supply chains, having already partnered with Koperasi Kopi Wanita Gayo since 2025 on seedling support for climate adaptation. The volunteer cohort is coordinated in partnership with the Korean University Council for Social Service and World Friends Korea.

 

8. Call to Action 

A landslide can strip a hillside of soil in minutes. Rebuilding it — and the trust, knowledge, and resilience that go with it — takes people willing to show up and do the work.

Back Roots of Resilience and help send 30 Korean student volunteers to Aceh this summer to teach, plant, and build a partnership that lasts well beyond a two-week trip.

 

Funding Period: May 1, 2026 – July 31, 2026