{"id":11774,"date":"2017-03-14T17:30:58","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T17:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/2017\/03\/14\/fire-free-village-program-starts-early-encourage-vigilance-riau\/"},"modified":"2025-02-20T07:45:57","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T07:45:57","slug":"fire-free-village-program-starts-early-encourage-vigilance-riau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/articles\/fire-free-village-program-starts-early-encourage-vigilance-riau\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire Free Village Program Starts Early to Encourage Vigilance in Riau"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>APRIL Group\u2019s Fire Free Village Program (FFVP) team is busy visiting villages across Riau Province to raise awareness of the importance of fire prevention ahead of the 2017 dry season. This is in line with Indonesia\u2019s President Jokowi\u2019s recent call for increased vigilance.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In January, President Jokowi directed local governments to declare emergency status early in fire-prone areas including Riau, East and West Kalimantan, and Papua provinces. Riau Province has since declared a State of Emergency on 24 January.<\/p>\n<p>In 2017, the <a href=\"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/en\/2015\/07\/31\/april-introduce-fire-free-village-program-riaus-first-collaborative-fire-prevention-initiative\/\">FFVP<\/a> will work directly with 27 villages in Riau, covering an area of more than 700,000 hectares of community land \u2013 almost 10 times the area of Singapore and up from the 592,080 hectares covered by last year\u2019s program.<\/p>\n<p>This year&#8217;s program will cover 18 Fire Free Villages (FFV) plus nine Fire Resilient Communities (FRC).<\/p>\n<p>As at the end of January, the APRIL team \u2013 working closely with local government, police, military, and village crew leaders \u2013 was visiting villages to spread fire prevention messages and advice, and preparing for the upcoming dry season.<\/p>\n<p>The FFVP is made up of three separate components:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fire Aware Communities (FAC) \u2013 an introductory phase on fire prevention and awareness that in 2016 targeted junior schools in 50 villages. It will reach another 50 villages in 2017.<\/li>\n<li>Fire Free Villages (FFV) \u2013 the comprehensive fire prevention program working directly with selected villages over two years.<\/li>\n<li>Fire Resilient Communities (FRC) \u2013 an ongoing engagement with communities that have graduated from FFV.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Nine new villages \u2013 all located on the Island of Pulau Padang \u2013 have been announced as part of this year\u2019s FFVP, joining the nine that completed their first fire season last year as program participants.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2845\" style=\"width: 985px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2845\" class=\"size-large wp-image-2845\" src=\"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/FFVPAlamBunga-975x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"975\" height=\"1024\"><p id=\"caption-attachment-2845\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Child in Riau holding Fire Free Village Program comic book on fire prevention<\/p><\/div>\n<p>This year\u2019s FFVP hopes to build on the success of 2016 that \u2013 according to Carbon Conservation\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aprilasia.com\/images\/pdf_files\/Fire-Free-Village-Program-Review-2016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">independent review<\/a> \u2013 saw a significant overall improvement in fire prevention compared with the first season of FFVP.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aprilasia.com\/images\/pdf_files\/Fire-Free-Village-Program-Review-2016.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">report<\/a> notes that in 2016 a total of 390.6 hectares was damaged by fire, representing less than 0.06% of the program\u2019s total coverage area of 592,080 ha. Of this, 344.9 hectares were recorded in one village, unfortunately skewing a positive result for the 18 villages. In 2015, 0.01% of the FFVP\u2019s 427,876 hectares saw fires.<\/p>\n<p>A total of 14 villages \u2013 out of the 18 involved in FFVP in 2016 \u2013 have already received rewards in recognition of their efforts and success in preventing fires last year. Only four villages failed to earn a partial or full reward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOverall we were very pleased with the results in 2016 given that the FFVP coverage area was much larger to monitor\u201d, said Craig Tribolet, APRIL&#8217;s Strategic Fire and Protection Manager. \u201cThanks to the support of the police and government and the commitment of the communities, village leaders, fire crew leaders and, of course, our FFVP team, we saw continued progress towards a fire-free future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, he warned against complacency heading into 2017. \u201cThe threat of fire is omnipresent so, as President Jokowi has highlighted, vigilance has to remain at the highest levels,\u201d Mr. Tribolet said, adding that the FFVP team had been encouraged by the response of the new villages entering the program in 2017 \u2013 as well as the continued commitment of those entering the second year of their FFVP experience.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2846\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2846\" class=\"size-large wp-image-2846\" src=\"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/FFVPSocStudents-1024x670.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"670\"><p id=\"caption-attachment-2846\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fire Free Village Program team advocating fire prevention in Riau schools.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cThere seems to be a growing acceptance that a cultural shift is needed \u2013 both in terms of thinking and practices \u2013 and that the prevention of fires will have long-term and wide-reaching benefits for their communities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Villages that performed well in 2016 have already earmarked their rewards for community infrastructure projects ranging from roadside culverts to community halls.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Tribolet said: \u201cThe rewards and the other programs have worked as an incentive which helped villages embrace FFVP \u2013 and that\u2019s a very good thing \u2013 but it will be interesting to see how the villages which have now graduated from FFVP continue to perform as \u2018fire resilient communities\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis will be an important benchmark going forward. I\u2019m confident that, with continued reinforcement of our programs and messages, we have the makings of a committed fire-free community in Riau province.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Initiated by APRIL, <a href=\"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/en\/2015\/07\/31\/april-introduce-fire-free-village-program-riaus-first-collaborative-fire-prevention-initiative\/\">FFVP<\/a> is executed in collaboration with local NGOs and is also supported by the local government, police, military and Riau\u2019s Disaster Mitigation Agency.<\/p>\n<p>In 2016, APRIL led the creation of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firefreealliance.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Fire Free Alliance (FFA)<\/a> bringing together some of the biggest agricultural companies operating in Riau, including APRIL, Asian Agri, Wilmar, Musim Mas and Sime Darby. APRIL has shared FFVP manuals and toolkits with FFA partners to assist development of their own programs with neighboring communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>APRIL Group\u2019s Fire Free Village Program (FFVP) team is busy visiting villages across Riau Province to raise awareness of the importance of fire prevention ahead&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[82,637,617,575,85,587,194],"class_list":{"0":"post-11774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-from-the-field","8":"tag-april","9":"tag-ffvp","10":"tag-fire-free-village-program","11":"tag-fire-prevention","12":"tag-indonesia-forest","13":"tag-land-and-forest-fire","14":"tag-riau"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11774"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11777,"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11774\/revisions\/11777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/april.hellopomelo.space\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}