You can also download a PDF of this trip brochure.

The Alliance for Tompotika Conservation (AlTo)’s

Annual Eco Service Tour:

Art for Conservation:

Community Mural Painting in Tompotika

November 2011

• Travel off the beaten path, and make a positive difference in the places you visit.
• Hang out and create beautiful art with local kids.
• Hike, snorkel, and view wildlife in the world’s biodiversity epicenter.
• Help promote conservation while you do all of the above. Two teams of AlTo Eco‐Service Artists will work with local children to create a wildlife‐themed mural painting in each of the villages of Taima and Teku, Tompotika. We will also spend a few days hiking tropical rainforests, snorkeling the world’s richest coral reefs, and watching Sulawesi’s utterly unique wildlife.

AlTo has openings for a maximum of four people to join our 2011 Art for Conservation Mural Project in Tompotika, Sulawesi, Indonesia. You will be part of a team facilitating local Tompotikan children in creating a mural painting celebrating their wildlife and natural heritage.

The Details:

What:

When: November 7‐21, 2011 (15 days, exact dates to be confirmed)

Cost: $2900 per person, not including international airfare (usually $1600-$2000). Limit 4 people. Price includes all in‐country travel, meals, and accommodation. A $500 deposit is required to hold your space. $100 discount if signed up by May 1, 2011.

Leadership: AlTo’s Eco‐Service tours are led by AlTo Director Marcy Summers. The two mural painting teams will be led by artists Will Forrester and Sandra Noel.

Please note: We have room for only four additional participants on this trip. If interested, please contact Marcy Summers for further details: Tompotika children in a previous Art for Conservation project.

The Alliance for Tompotika Conservation

info@tompotika.org ~ www.tompotika.org

For older updates, click here.

The Alliance for Tompotika Conservation / Aliansi Konservasi Tompotika (AlTo) celebrates it's 5th anniversary this year!

June 2011 Update: Ideas for Building the Future

Above all, it’s cold in the United States! So say Anim Alyoihana and Agus Laya, two of AlTo’s permanent Tompotikan staff, who last month completed their first trip outside Indonesia—a working visit to the west coast of the U.S. (It’s true, this has been an unseasonably cold spring here on Vashon Island, Washington. But when you’re from Tompotika, which is just a hair south of the equator, then just about anywhere else feels cold to you!)

A great deal of what AlTo does is about “building capacity”—that is, helping local Tompotikans acquire the knowledge, skills, and experience to initiate and run conservation programs on their own. To that end, we’ve brought many an Indonesian expert to Tompotika to share expertise in such fields as birdwatching, use of GPS technology, butterfly identification, etc. But it’s also about firing peoples’ imaginations—people from Tompotika and everywhere in the AlTo family—with new ideas, examples, and exchanges with others in the world who are trying, like them, to find new ways to live on our small, changing planet.

So, in their three-week visit to the U.S., Agus and Anim had a full schedule. They attended the 31st annual International Sea Turtle Symposium in San Diego. They hiked in the Olympic Mountains. They visited three zoos, two aquaria, an organic farm, a wildlife rescue center, a community arts festival, and more. They counted sea stars on beaches and tried out recycling facilities. At Pt. Defiance Zoo and Aquarium (PDZA), which is a partner in AlTo’s conservation efforts, Anim and Agus spent time shadowing and learning from PDZA’s expert education and outreach staff, gaining tips they can use in our Conservation Awareness Campaigns in Tompotika. They were also treated with some specially-tailored animal first aid training from PDZA’s veterinary staff, so that, for example, they can now make a quick health assessment of a captive sea turtle before releasing it back into the ocean. They ate pizza (yuck!) and ice cream (yum!).

In three weeks, Agus and Anim had a whirlwind introduction to a wide variety of people, places, and ways of living that can help inform their imaginations as they, and our other Indonesian staff and partners, share in creating our conservation programs and shaping new lifestyles in Tompotika. They were struck, for example, that in the U.S., school buses come around to take children back and forth to school—for free!—there’s not much trash on the ground, people read books on trains and while waiting, and folks with disabilities may have jobs in the supermarket, and are given priority on the bus. They’ll take all this back with them to Tompotika, visitors from the U.S. and elsewhere will continue to make occasional trips to Tompotika and bring those impressions home, in future years other AlTo staff will come to the U.S., and so on. And all those experiences and exchanges will help us forge new programs, new attitudes, new ways of living that we can all take home with us, and make a difference. We’re all searching for more sustainable, more conscious, more life-affirming ways of living on this earth that we share—together, we’ll continue to explore the possibilities.

Thanks for helping to make it all possible!

Marcy Summers
Director, Alliance for Tompotika Conservation (AlTo)
Vashon Is., WA  98070  USA

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For older updates, click here.