Kopernik's Wonder Women Eastern Indonesia initiative

I want to introduce the NGO that I am working for, Kopernik, and specially, it´s most fascinating project: the Wonder Women program. 

Kopernik’s founders realized that affordable technologies that have the potential to improve people's lives already existed, but they weren’t reaching the people that need them the most. So, for example, 780 million people have no access to a clean water supply, and owning a simple and cheap water filter could provide safe, clean drinking water requiring little effort and a small investment. In order to bridge this gap they launched Kopernik, which works under the idea that simple, life-changing technologies, such as solar light lamps, clean cook stoves, water filters, etc should reach remote and last mile communities to help reduce poverty.

In order to fulfill this mission, Kopernik implements different programs. The initiative that I am working on is the Wonder Women program, since in addition to the goal of scaling up energy access, it has a women’s economic empowerment component. 

How does it work? Kopernik recruits women in different communities that show interest in boosting their income through selling new technologies. These women are able to launch their own businesses without getting into debt because they receive the products on consignment and earn a margin on every sale.

Because most of these women do not have experience in business, Kopernik provides training and mentorship. On the one hand, women receive training in technology use and maintenance, sales and marketing, accounting and financial management, and public speaking. These training sessions prepare them with the skills and confidence to succeed as social entrepreneurs. On the other hand, Kopernik business development coaching and mentoring helps the women to overcome challenges and grow their businesses on a journey to becoming empowered entrepreneurs.

But let´s stop for one second on the name of the program. Generally, when people hear ‘Wonder Woman’, they instantly think about a superhero character, a world leader or a celebrity such as Dilma Rousseff, Hillary Clinton, Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, etc. However, Kopernik Wonder Women are a school teacher from Soe, a housewife from Kupang, a seller in a market stall in Kefa, that have one characteristic in common: they are determined to generate positive social changes for their families through increasing their income, and for their communities by making clean technology available.  

This internship gave me the unique opportunity of meeting many real ‘Wonder Women’ with inspiring courage and community spirit. I got to know their stories by interviewing them and by trying to understand their socio-economic situation, their needs and expectations, the problems they face when they try to sell the products, and so on. One of the women that impressed me the most was a Wonder Woman in Soe, Ka Heni. She was (curiously) the youngest we met and she blew me away with her motivation and passion for being able to impact positively on her community and to increase her income. She was so committed and interested in the project that when we finished with our questions, she started asking us questions and making comments and suggestions in order to improve the program. She had great ideas about how Kopernik can support all Wonder Women to sell even more. That is, she was not only receiving what this NGO has to offer, but also contributing to introduce changes in the program for the better. Definitely Ka Heni is a change agent, an empowered woman and a Wonder Women. 

Some successes and challenges of my internship

I would like to begin by saying that the main purpose of my internship is to help Kopernik to reach more beneficiaries by designing an operational evaluation and creating a map of what potential communities Kopernik could expand its project. Our main analysis is based on household surveys, whose results are also verified through our interviews with the Wonder Women and beneficiaries. So far, we have already conducted 242 surveys to women in the areas around Soe and Kefa, in West Timor and this is the first time that Kopernik has ever had a quantitative analysis with this sample size! It is great being able to apply the quantitative tools that I have learned at HKS and to know that these tools will help Kopernik decide on which areas it is appropriate to scale-up the Wonder Women Program based on our data.  

However, the fieldwork and living in a foreign country have had a lot of challenges that I want to share:



Getting to the last mile is complicated. Some of the people that most need biomass cookstoves live in remote communities. One of the things that I liked best about Kopernik is that they work hard to reach these communities. However, the trip to get there could be very long and tiring. Just to give an example, from Bali to Oepuah Selatan, one of the villages that we visited, we had to take two flights, drive more than 12 hours and walk for a while.

Language barriers do not allow me to communicate as freely as I would like. I have to confess that I underestimated the trouble associated with not knowing the language. That complicates even simple things such as ordering food or buying cell phone credit (“pulsa”). In order to collect the information, we had to trained bi-lingual people (bah, actually they were Indonesian that knew some words in English) in every area to help us with the surveys, translated all the questionnaires, etc. Fortunately, one of my team members, Ade, is Indonesian and she has helped me a lot. The most important words that I have learned are “Permisi” (that means “excuse me” and I use it to get into houses) and “Terima kasih” (which means “thank you” and I use it for everything). Finally, smiles are universal and always help to make people come closer.



Culture here is very different. Indonesians are so kind and friendly you feel welcome everywhere. However, their culture is very different to Western culture and familiarizing ourselves with it took us some time. First, 75% of the clothes that I packed are not appropriate for Indonesian standards and I could not wear them at all. They are very conservative and wearing sleeveless t-shirts or skirts above the knee is not appropriate. Second, people get really surprised when I say that I am 26 years old and do not have a partner. They usually ask why and I always take the time to explain that it is a decision and I am happy being single.



The food is good but beware of the spicy options. My favorite dishes and fresh juices are the local Nasi Goreng, chicken satay, and Sirsak. However, the food is much spicier than in Argentina or the U.S. When I just arrived, I ate happily a red thing, thinking that it was pepper but it wasn’t, it was a red chili that made me cry and sweated.

Three-stone fire and its health consequences

First of all, sorry for the delay in updates! I spent last month doing research in remote communities in Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, where internet connectivity is very limited.

One of the places that my two great team members, Gaby and Ade, and I visited was Soe. There we had the chance to interview 127 women in 12 remote communities. The main goal of these interviews was to understand their cooking methods, preferences and needs.

A fact that really shocked me was that 93 percent of the women that we talked to use three stone fire to cook, as seen in the image above. The main problem with this method is indoor air pollution and its consequences. Specifically, indoor biomass cooking smoke is associated with many diseases, such as respiratory illnesses and cancer, and women and young children are affected disproportionately.   

Trying to understand better the magnitude of this problem, I found some interesting pieces of data. Women and children in developing countries are exposed each day to pollution from indoor

cooking smoke up to 20 times higher than the maximum recommended levels (WHO 2005). Moreover, smoke from cooking fuels is estimated to account for nearly 2 million deaths annually, more than 99 percent of which occur in developing countries (WHO and UNDP 2009).

One of the ways to solve this problem is replacing traditional cookstoves with biomass cookstoves and this is what Kopernik is trying to do in Eastern Indonesia.