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| Staff Profile - M. Afnan, Site/Training Coordinator
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 For all of his adult life, Afnan has been learning new skills and passing them on to others. His work with the GreenHand Field School, tragically initiated by the tsunami, carries on this tradition.
After graduating from a technical school in Aceh, Afnan traveled around Java and Sumatra working on many projects as a contractor and construction expert and helping his family with their handicraft industry. He's lost count of the training courses he's taken over the years in a wide range of subjects. Always a highly disciplined personality, he was constantly asking his teachers for more information.
"I've always wanted to help the poor," he explained. Even before the disaster he was using his own resources to buy seeds for farmers and teach them new techniques.
The tsunami swept away Afnan's home, his work and 24 members of his family. In the first days after the disaster, he tried to help the many people he found wandering around crazed with grief. Soon he joined up with some friends to help survivors in locations had not yet received assistance, using his construction skills to help build shelters. Eventually the team that came together after the tsunami became Green Camp, a formal NGO, which joined with IDEP to develop the Greenhand Field School.
Afnan has been an important member of the GFS team since June 2005. "This is a very good project," he says. "We have a great team and the concept will help many people in Aceh. Permaculture offers many new solutions to our farmers. I'm especially looking forward to learning about appropriate technologies that I can share with others."
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