Wilda Yanti Salam (Memodapur), and Muhammad Ikram ( Nusantara Education Research), both INSPIRASI alumni from the 2024 cohort, recently presented their collaborative abstract at the MoFREC Research Symposium 2026, held on 26 October at Monash University Indonesia, Jakarta.
Titled “Cooking Stories, Building Children's Futures: Child-Led Food Knowledge Preservation in Climate-Vulnerable Island Communities of Eastern Indonesia,” their research explores how children can help preserve traditional food knowledge in Wangi-Wangi Island, Wakatobi, amid the challenges of climate change.
Working with 26 children and their families, the project adapted Tula-Tula, a traditional Wakatobi-Buton oral storytelling practice, to document local food knowledge. Children interviewed their parents and grandparents, collected 17 traditional recipes, and co-created an illustrated recipe book.
The project highlights how children can play an active role in preserving culinary heritage, strengthening intergenerational learning, and keeping local food traditions alive in climate-vulnerable island communities.