Napoleon Sangawan jr.

I like to help communities. The communities don’t have a bridge to the government, but they can talk to us and tell us their needs and sentiments and we can help them have a dialogue or make petitions to be given to the government.

It’s hard work, but when you are with the community and they say ‘thank you for being with us, thanks for helping us’ then it all disappears – your stress, tiredness, everything. I think transparency helps communities because if mining companies were to give the true effects of mining on the environment there would be less conflict within the communities. It’s really important to talk about the environmental impact – this land, this water, it’s just borrowed. We just borrowed our natural resources from the next generation.