Hi!, my name is Brata Yuda. I am from Lombok, a beautiful island in Indonesia, just east of the famous Bali island. I was born here, in a small village, close to a city called Tanjung, on the west coast of Lombok. I consider myself as a social entrepreneur. This means, I try to support local initiative that tends to create a better living for the communities. This website is dedicated to one of the project I invest myself in, a coral garden. I invite you to visit my other projects as well as a homestay program I offer to foreigners by visiting my other website.
A fishing village without the fishes...
Kids in the village
This is the story of a fishing village, just north of Bangsal. A few years ago, the fisherman noticed they were catching less and less fishes in their nets. In order to feed their family, they started to destroy the coral they could find. They transform it into powder and could sell it. It did not take long to destroy big parts of what had grown for decades. Rapidly, there were almost no more fish (the colorful ones, not the one we eat) coming into the bay. We all know that coral is a rich environment for lots of sea creatures. We could not let that go and had to think about alternatives. We decided to start a coral regeneration/transplantation project. Lately, the fishing activities are better and luckily the villagers had to stop destroying the corals due to new regulations. We now have a few motivated young villagers, working daily on the regeneration/transplantation project on a volunteer base.
Our goal
Volunteers with my friend
We started in 2004 and we want to create a coral garden. Tourists would come to see the variety of coral we have been able to protect. Villagers would take the tourists on boats and bring them around the bay in exchange of money. We would provide the snorkelling gears, we could extend our services to homestays/food in the village also. It is a really nice bay, a beautiful beach and we promise you nice sunsets. We can also tell you that because we brought back coral, colorful fishes have started to come back too! Everything is there for a nice stay in a typical place. We are working everyday to make our garden bigger and as varied as possible. You are welcome to visit us at anytime from now on!