Bardolf Paul makes a difference in different way

Patrick Guntensperger, Contributor Jakarta Post, Central Kalimantan

It is hard to imagine a less likely partnership for making a positive difference in the lives of
villagers in Central Kalimantan province on Borneo island. Bardolf Paul, a Canadian
expatriate and one-time commercial designer, is quietly working deep in the Kalimantan
jungles to improve the lives of the Dayak villagers.

The partnership, supported and funded by Kalimantan Gold, a London and Toronto-listed
exploration company, is the result of an unexpected synergy between a unique corporate
viewpoint and a man with an unusual capacity for living his vision.

Bardolf was born in Canada in 1943 and spent most of his adult life in the corporate world as
a designer and graphics specialist. At an age when most people would be making retirement
plans, Bardolf left the business world and went back to university, this time to study forestry.
As a Canadian living in British Columbia, an area developed largely as a result of its abundant
natural resources, he had always been interested in the social implications of the extraction
industries, particularly forestry.

He was predominantly concerned with the ways cultures develop around forests, the ways in
which people's lives are affected by the industrial use of forested land, and the interaction
among the various stakeholders, from the extraction license holders to the government
departments and, most significantly, to the residents of the region being harvested.
Armed with a new degree and an enormous sensitivity both for the earth and for the people
who inhabit it, he spent more than a decade working with a series of NGOs in India and
Vietnam before coming to Indonesia.

Kalimantan Gold Corporation Limited is an exploration company that is working in the Central
and East Kalimantan regions. Breaking from traditional mining and exploration stereotypes,
Kalimantan Gold's corporate culture includes a deep concern about the company's
environmental and social impact on the areas in which it invests.

One of the company's main concerns -- arguably unique among junior mining companies -- is
that local communities should be one of the prime beneficiaries of any mineral development in
the area. This reflects the World Bank's stance on lack of good governance, which it argues
has been the main cause for local people not benefiting from extractive industries like mining.
The foundation Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta was established in 1997 to redress the balance
and, with Bardolf Paul at the helm, the company established a close relationship with local
people and local government, focusing on conditions for improving governance in local
communities and within local government. Underwritten by Kalimantan Gold and led by
Bardolf, the foundation has been applying a community development approach that links to
the new bottom-up government planning mechanism called musrenbang.

"The key to what we do is that first of all, we listen," said Bardolf on a stopover in Jakarta to
Canada for his annual leave. "We act as facilitators and capacity builders, not as leaders or
patrons. The work that gets done, the advances made, and the benefits derived are direct
results of the communities themselves. We just help by providing a framework to get the
process started and a methodology for ensuring its sustainability."

According to Bardolf, the following principles are key for engaging successfully and
sustainably in the development process. First, understand the local context clearly -- both
government and community; second, involve local people as partners; third, invest in building
local capacity, based on local needs and aspirations; and fourth, work with local institutions
and existing mechanisms to strengthen the links between community and government.
Bardolf and his team spend much of their time meeting with the Dayak people and facilitating
the development of plans to implement their ideas. By helping them create village
development plans according to their cultural and traditional ways of life, then facilitating the
election of a village management group, Yayasan Tambhak Sinta helps ensure that it is the
people's own vision that is worked toward. The Yayasan then helps by providing support in
all the phases of implementation of the village development plan and providing whatever
degree of knowledge and technology transfer is needed to see the plan to fruition.

Along the way, Bardolf makes sure that he is available to act as mentor and go-to person
when the village management groups are contracting with local service providers for the labor
and expertise to carry out the development plans. At the moment 19 villages are directly
involved in the development facilitated by the Yayasan, and the work is expanding to more
villages every year.

Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta is a unique NGO. Funded entirely by a mining company for the
purpose of giving back to the community and country, it has been working below the publicity
radar screen for years. The improvement in the lives of the villagers is palpable and has been
supported by a corporation for a decade -- before they have even broken ground or extracted
a gram of minerals.

Bardolf is an unsung hero, spending most of his time thousands of kilometers from his home
and family, working in a decidedly unglamorous and virtually anonymous way to help the
villagers of central Kalimantan cope with global expansion into their traditional territory.
At a time when corporate social responsibility has become a legal requirement in Indonesia,
resource-based companies could all take leaf from the book of Kalimantan Gold, Yayasan
Tambuhak Sinta and Bardolf Paul.

More information on the work being done by Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta can be found at
www.kalimantan.com

T. C. Scott
PO Box 51
Citeureup 16810
BOGOR, INDONESIA

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