When Our Volunteer Teams First Met

Every farm has a day zero for its people, even if the plants don’t notice it. Ours was the afternoon the KKN-T IPB University 2026 team walked into the fertigation beds for the first time and met the student caretakers who tend them every week.

There’s a particular kind of introduction that happens over grow bags rather than handshakes. Instead of small talk, we walked the rows together: how the drip lines feed each bag, why cucumbers get trellised instead of left to sprawl, what a healthy leaf looks like versus a thirsty one. Aqila, Faiz, Felicia, Hanif, Kiara, Naila, Naura, and Talitha traded questions with the caretakers who’d already spent months learning these beds by hand.

It’s easy to think of “community volunteers” and “student caretakers” as two separate groups on an org chart. In practice, the line blurs fast. By the end of that first visit, the volunteers weren’t just observing, they were checking coco-peat moisture and pointing out which bags needed attention next. That’s really the story of Jauhar Urban Farming: nobody stays a visitor for long.

We’re glad to have them as part of how this farm runs, and this journal will keep tracking what the two teams build together from here.