Welcoming new members of the team: Syufra and Nayla!

SOS and our partners, the Orangutan Information Centre (OIC), are pleased to introduce you to Syufra and Nayla. We are pleased to welcome our new Reporting and Communication Manager and Reporting and Communication Assistant. It is a pleasure for us to welcome these two dynamic and passionate women to the team.

Syufra comes from Medan, and graduated in Political Science at Padjadjaran University (Bandung, Java Island) and holds a Human Rights masters degree from New Delhi University. Since 2005, she has acquired extensive experience in project reporting, communication and training. Syufra will assist us in project reporting and overseeing project management. She will also work with Nayla to write articles and design communication and awareness materials for local communities, as well as sharing more news from the field with our supporters.

Nayla was born in Rantauparapat, a small city located south of Medan. She has been involved in development, reforestation and conservation programs as a volunteer since 2009. Nayla has been working in cooperation with OIC since 2011, specialising in hosting guests at our project sites, acting as an ambassador for the positive impact of frontline conservation programmes. Hence she has excellent knowledge of our activities and her writing skills will be very helpful to keep all of you up to date regarding  actions in the field!

It is a great pleasure and an honour for SOS and OIC to add these two women to our team. Indeed, conservation is very often dominated by men, but it is our belief that women can bring transformational changes to the way we work to save the Sumatran orangutans and their habitat. This feeling is shared by Nayla, who said:

“Women can change the way we lead conservation projects and activities, especially by creating a stronger link with local community and involving more women to support our action at the local level. Environment conservation means working for our future, that’s really motivating and exciting!”

Syufra couldn’t agree more:

“Women are too often left aside from conservation action, whether at NGO or local community level. But we can bring a more constructive, less conflictive vision based on a long term strategy. And we will prove that it is possible to save our biodiversity and forests while ensuring local development, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals”.

A warm welcome to these two new team members who will definitely be very valuable to implement our vision to stop deforestation, save Sumatran orangutans and their habitat while supporting local communities’ social and economic development!

We would also like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our partners, Beautiful Cups, for their support in bringing Nayla onto the team. Communicating with our supporters about the impact of the programmes that we back in Sumatra is so important, and we’re looking forward to sharing more stories from the field.