BIOTROP and the SEAMEO Regional Centre for Special Education Needs (SEN) agreed to collaborate to build capacities of special education teachers in Indonesia on agricultural production and livelihood generation.

This agreement resulted from the visit of SEAMEO SEN Director, Datin Dr Yasmin binti Hussain, together with her Deputy Director for Research and Innovation Dr Kway Eng Hock, and her personal assistant Ms Siti Nadia Sahak, to BIOTROP on 18 November 2015.

BIOTROP and SEAMEO SEN plan to institutionalize the collaboration through a Memorandum of Understanding soon.

The idea of the collaboration aims to enable special education teachers to impart agricultural production and livelihood generation knowledge and skills to their students with special needs to become productive and self-reliant citizens.

The collaboration would also involve repackaging of BIOTROP’s printed materials on its technologies to be user-friendly for people who have special needs and maximizing the use of geospatial information system (GIS) to map out children with special needs and special education schools in Bogor and nearby districts.

The SEAMEO SEN delegates were welcomed by BIOTROP Director Dr Irdika Mansur, Deputy Director for Program Dr Jess C. Fernandez, and department managers and unit supervisors.

After the meeting, Dr Irdika Mansur toured the visitors to BIOTROP's laboratories and tissue culture, mushroom, nursery, and hydroponic facilities.