Meet Novia Sagita: Managing Director

Hello everyone!

My name is Novia Sagita. I was born in Pontianak and I’m the youngest in my family with four sisters, four brothers, and dozens of nieces and nephews. I’m half Dayak, half Arabic, raised in Malayu tradition, and believe in God as the almighty one and the prophet Muhammad as the great faith messenger.  Although raised in a Muslim way of life, I think my sisters, my brothers and I are lucky that our parents taught us to respect all people and religions.

I became interested in English in high school, which I believe opened up the rest of the world to me. My mother wanted me to be a lawyer and sent me to a justice academy school in Jakarta, belonging to the Indonesian Government. Although I was highly successful there, I left because I didn’t like the amount of bureaucracy and thought I could help the world better in other ways. I came back to my hometown and decided to pursue my own path in life.

In 1996 I was introduced to an American couple who just started a NGO based in Pontianak, called People, Resources and Conservation Foundation (PRCF). Through this job, I was introduced to the fields of conservation and community development. I was incredibly fortunate to have direct involvement in facilitating project activities with local communities.

Afterward, I joined KOBUS Foundation in Sintang, Kalimantan. This NGO works towards a revival of Dayak's traditional textiles. It was through KOBUS Foundation I discovered my passion for the subject of ‘material culture’ especially the Dayak traditional weavings and textile works. One of our projects was to establish a secure economy for the weavers; therefore, we could preserve culture while also providing a sustainable income for the women. Artworks from the Dayak people involved with KOBUS are of the highest quality and are acknowledged not only throughout Indonesia but internationally. I had a chance to work together with the community and received full support from the government to establish an ethnography museum in the Sintang region. It is now known as Museum Kapuas Raya. This lead me to a fellowship from the Ford Foundation to study Museum preservation techniques at Denver University in America.

All these experiences propelled me to my work today with Planet Indonesia, and the underlying question: “Why do we do need to connect conservation and community development?”

Conservation is a tool to protect our environment, to keep it, to sustain it. Ultimately, it can help us to support human life in the present and the future.

Community development increases the quality of human life through self-reliance and sustainability. These two concepts are inevitably connected, and when in harmony, give balance and advantage to each other. As the new paradigm says “environmental preservation can not be separated from cultural preservation.”

To conclude, I joined Planet Indonesia because of its new, good, young, and healthy energy. We are bringing a new perspective and new techniques to tackle these issues. I am excited to work together with the community (especially women) through our development program to reinforce the power and build local capacity. Moreover, I am excited to be tying our community development programs with sustainable resource use to increase quality and capacity of life for all.

Sampai Nanti!

Novia