California Bakery up and running
in Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Global Operations and Development(GO&D) President John Ditty and construction consultant Pat Buers recently returned from a trip to Indonesia where several micro-enterprise programs are successfully in operation! In Banda Aceh, the GO&D sponsored "California Bakery" is in business, producing bread and pastries for the local community and providing locals with a source of employment. GO&D provided "California Bakery" with the equipment necessary to begin work, including ovens, mixers, baking pans, and cooking materials. The bakery is located on a street that was fully submerged following the tsunami, but today, numerous businesses have been rebuilt, their owners, managers, and employees working diligently to reinvigorate the hard hit economy.

John Ditty spent time on Nias Island, where GO&D's local affiliate, Global Operations and Development - Nias is headquartered. GO&D's Indonesian staff is hard at work managing and overseeing development projects that will enable the islanders to regain their self-sufficiency. To support a commercial ship business and a fishing cooperative, Ditty and Buers worked together with staff members to build a dock at the waterfront near the office. GO&D has already facilitated the construction of a Juwita and, with the support of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Laguna Beach, another Juwita was recently completed. Plans to build an entire fleet of shipping boats will be fully explored with the assistance of partners.

Nias Island is the site of the GO&D supported Training Center. Located next door to GO&D's local office, the Training Center was developed to host displaced families for 3-6 months, during which time the families will be trained in either pig or goat farming. In the next month, the first seven families will be settled into the Training Center, where there day to day needs during the training time period will be met by sponsors from the BNKP Indonesia consortium of churches. GO&D expects that the Training Center will provide families who have lost their livelihoods with a new skill set appropriate to their home environment.

While on Nias Island, John Ditty and Pat Buers also visited multiple church sites in need of reconstruction following the devastating earthquake which destroyed 80% of the infrastructure on the island. Two new sites to be assisted were assessed and Buers, a construction consultant, discussed earthquake resistant construction methods with church members.

The last days of the trip were spent in Jakarta, Indonesia, where John Ditty met with Lutheran World Relief representatives to discuss medical student participation in the "Young Doctor, Young Nurse" program. This public health program set on Nias Island endeavors to recruit medical students and doctors from Jakarta to Nias for two to three week rotations to instruct local school children on basic health promotion disease prevention and to work in clinics. Three teams of doctors and medical students have already come to Nias Island and in the near future, GO&D plans to partner with Indonesian medical schools to enlist more health professionals for this essential program.