grantees » Hisma Kahman

Hisma is from Southwest Sulawesi in Indonesia, and has been involved in environmental issues since the beginning of her career. Currently she has an important position in the Bumi Sawerigading Foundation in Indonesia as the project leader of the “Negotiated Approach to River Basin Management”. Her role is to promote sustainable management of the Lamasi – Rongkong basin to ensure sustainable livelihood and natural resources. She is also the Community Organizer, the Community Mapping Facilitator, all the while focusing on the empowerement of women. She says, “I focus on empowerment of the people and capacity building through training.”

Hisma has always been committed to the interests of her people, sharing knowledge and implementing development projects in cooperation with the locals. She used the JWH initiative grant to take private English courses and improve her communication skills. She now has the confidence to interact with people from abroad and network with partners, such as donor agencies and NGOs that work on water management. Her next goal is to keep up her studying and improve her language skills in English even more and take a TOEFL test. Hisma continues to improve her community’s potential to reach for her goal: “My dream for the future is for people to be self-reliant in their communities and to consciously participate in formulating developmental policies relating to their lives”. To reach this aim, Hisma has become a practicing companion lawyer for people that have been marginalized by policies to help them negotiate conflicts, both in litigation and non-litigation.