Concerned with numerous youth leaving Colol Village to find better livelihoods, Ronald founded the Millennial Gejur Colol Community. Through this community, Ronald hopes to encourage young generations, especially those who have obtained school and university education, to serve in the village. ‘Gejur’ comes from the word ‘Manggarai’, which means diligent, creative, or innovative. Ronald sees a lot of potentials in his village. In addition to being known as one of the largest coffee-producing regions in East Manggarai, Colol Village has potential in its nature, which can be developed as a tourist village.
However, the potential and beauty of Colol Village have not been managed optimally. Owing to the knowledge acquired from SCOPI (Sustainable Coffee Platform Indonesia), Ronald got an idea to develop his village into a coffee commodity-based tourist destination. Along with other members of the Millennial Gejur Colol, Ronald designed and implemented several programs in his village, including horticultural development, local food development, and tourism awareness activities.
During many opportunities, Ronald educates the community to maintain the quality of Colol Coffee, from the harvest to the packaging process. In addition, Ronald also emphasizes the added value from coffee, such as making souvenirs, perfume, painting, and other products.
Ronald also actively promotes Colol Coffee through social media (instagram @ponan_coffee), where the content promotes Colol Coffee from when the coffee beans were still in trees to the post-harvest process. Going forward, Ronald and his established community will try to cultivate Juria Coffee, which is already very rare and almost extinct. For that, Ronald hopes to gain the support of various parties, especially the local government, for the seed nursery of Juria Coffee.
Some of the coffee varieties in Colol Village include Arabica, Juria, Yellow Caturra, Red Cattura, and Robusta. “Colol Coffee is the commodity that breathes life into the Colol people. All of their needs or livelihoods are from coffee. That is why I want to promote Colol Coffee to be more famous. Colol Coffee from Flores for the world,” he hopes.