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Behind the bustling capital of Indonesia where traffic and pollution is commonplace lies Banjarsari.
As soon as she moved to her new neighborhood in 1983, Harini Bambang Wahono promised herself to make the neighborhood of Banjarsari in southern Jakarta clean and green.
The neighborhood was a polluted area with trash was strewn everywhere. However, her family background of farming motivated her to plant flowers and trees. "What encouraged me to do this is my peasant family background. I have been taught since I was young about the environment, recycling the garbage and loving the plants by my farmer father who lived during the Dutch era," said Wahono.
Harini wanted to apply what she learnt home in her new staying place. "When I first moved here from my hometown in Central Java, I initiated and started an effort to make the area green. I just wanted to have an environment as green as my hometown," said Wahono.
Today, Banjarsari neighborhood has been transformed into an environmentally-friendly residential area, where green has replaced the dreary grey concrete and twisted a cool and shady environment.
Harini now trains girls how to preserve the environment and to take care of it in order to create awareness among the generations to come so that they carry on the work she started.
Her efforts have attracted the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to select Banjarsari as a pilot project for community waste management.
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