University of Indonesia Students Join Ketapang Residents to Prevent Peatland Fires

Fire on peatland does not always appear on the surface. Embers can move through underground layers, spreading slowly while remaining difficult to detect and extinguish. That hidden danger has brought University of Indonesia students into direct work with residents in Ketapang, West Kalimantan.

For 28 days, from July 21 to Aug. 18, students from several disciplines lived and worked in Pematang Gadung and Sungai Besar villages through the university’s community service program, known as K2N. Dr. Raisye Soleh Haghia, a lecturer in UI’s History Department, supervised the team.

Raisye said the program offered students more than a formal community-service assignment. In Ketapang, they confronted a problem often discussed in classrooms: how communities can live alongside peatland ecosystems while facing the recurring threat of forest and land fires.

The program was initiated by UI’s Directorate of Community Service and Social Innovation in partnership with the Indonesian Initiative for the Rehabilitation of Nature Foundation, or YIARI. The nonprofit works on protecting and rehabilitating wildlife and restoring peat forest ecosystems in Ketapang.

The students also worked with The Power of Mama, a YIARI-supported women’s community made up of local mothers. The group focuses on women’s empowerment and environmental conservation, and its members have played an important role in monitoring local land conditions. “The collaboration brings together the students’ academic knowledge and the experience of communities that have long dealt directly with their environment,” Raisye said in a statement to media in Jakarta on Sept. 3, 2026.

The students supported the women’s monitoring work, helped strengthen local capacity, and provided data and educational materials intended for continued use.

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The collaboration brings together the students’ academic knowledge and the experience of communities that have long dealt directly with their environment.