Community Engaged Learning on Sumba

This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST.

Three of our students flew to Sumba for their service assignments. Sumba is a remote island in eastern Indonesia known for its dry savanna landscapes, traditional villages with towering thatched roofs, and a slower pace of living. It is famous for its beaches with long stretches of nearly empty coastline, rolling hills, and a strong local culture centered around ancestral beliefs and rituals.

Waingapu, Melolo, and the surrounding area, where our SSTers are located, is especially quiet and expansive—with wide-open plains, scattered villages, traditional Ikat weaving communities, and rural atmosphere.

Zeke: Sopan Sumba

My service placement is with an organization called SOPAN. It is an organization with a variety of projects, from working to end traditional slavery, to fighting gender inequality in villages, to anti-bullying education in schools. It is evident that they serve a large role in the community. Everywhere I go, people know the name of SOPAN Sumba as well as the many volunteers who help it to exist. It has been fascinating to learn about the depth of the human rights challenges that Sumba faces and how these challenges are being addressed by the work of SOPAN.

Snapshots of Zeke’s daily routine: Morning coffee with his host grandparents; assisting with an anti-bullying presentation at a local school, evening visits with neighbors, watching his host mom create traditional Ikat weavings, and chess games on porch in the evenings.

This experience has been incredibly impactful on my life in countless ways. It has opened my eyes to the different ways people live, and displayed how much larger the world is than my communities in the US. One aspect of culture I would like to take back with me to the United States is the importance placed on time spent together and the importance of human connection rather than monetary wealth. 

ELLA: Unkriswina

Ukriswina is a Christian college that focuses on horticulture, economics, and environmentally responsible herding and grazing. Many of the students at Ukriswina are from Sumba or other nearby islands in East Nusa Tenggara. I spend most of my time at in the Global Connections office with Bu Janie, Kristin (PR), and Titan (social media manager). I answer to Ibu Nur from the LPPM program. I’ve been popping into English classes, and sometimes Bu Nur asks students to give me presentations in the lab of research they’ve been working on.

More recently, Ella has been exploring water issues in neighboring villages, engaging with local farmers and other community members about the cultural and agricultural significance of water, and the challenges of water access, flooding, retention, and sanitation facing many communities in East Sumba.

Snapshots from Ella’s life on Sumba: Incredible landscapes, time in the kitchen with host mom Ibu May, meals, picnics and market trips with her host family.

EMMA: JKI Love Sumba

My service location is a small town on the East side of Sumba called Melolo. The mission of the JKI Love Sumba is specific to this community, and Mennonite based. Their main area of work is providing a safe house for members of the neighborhood as well as providing scholarships for students to be able to attend schools. Love Sumba is the broader organization based in California. They have been able to send many students in the community to school, and currently they have 31 senior high school students on scholarship, and 3 students on university scholarship on different islands. The organization also works with volunteers and other organizations to provide educational help in the community where it is needed.

I have different types of work included in my service including teaching math at a junior high school, teaching english at a preschool, teaching english to members of my neighborhood, teaching english to three nearby villages, and helping with church related activities. I also get to go along with Ibu Fani to JKI Love Sumba events.

Snapshots of Emma’s daily life: The mission house where she lives – Rumah Misi, or prayer house- Rumah Doah, as many in the community call it; Traditional market visits on Thursdays with Ibu Fani to buy the groceries for the next week; The Mennonite church Emma attends each week and plays guitar during worship, where Ibu Fani is pastor.

One of the main skills I have been developing over the past two weeks is being okay with awkwardness, especially in the case of trying to communicate with someone who knows little to no English. I think it really pays off to be okay with discomfort, and to continue struggling through to communicate. I’m teaching in many different locations, and each one has a new variable to figure out. I am also gaining a lot of perspective on religion in Indonesia, specifically in Sumba. My service and living situation experiences are very religion-influenced, and I’m working on the balance between questioning and connecting my own thoughts on religion. I am very grateful for a very accepting host living situation, and Ibu Fani especially seems to really want to hear my thoughts on everything.