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Socfindo Conservation for the community

Planting medicinal plants in the garden is a tradition of the Indonesian family that has been passed down from generation to generation until now. However, the numbers of species are still very limited depending on the needs of the family.

As a country with various kinds of biodiversity, no less than 30,000 species of plants exist in the tropical forests of Indonesia, among those around 9,600 species are known to have medicinal properties but have not been widely used for treatment.

The knowledge of medicinal plants is still limited inside the community, passed down from one generation to another by verbal communication and was not properly documented. Taking this into consideration, motivated Socfindo Conservation to collect, cultivate and now has documented more than 1,500 species of medicinal plants.

When people come to visit Socfindo Conservation, they can easily find the information for each species. This is something new for the communities, especially for children who are not very familiar with medicinal plants. Socfindo Conservation even provides certain medicinal plants should the visitors wish to plant them in their garden.

Just like the visit from the ladies group of Labuhan Batu Utara Regency to Socfindo Conservation, not only did they learn about these medicinal plants but also the concept in which they wish to adopt so they can build and implement this project in their area.

They realise that it is important to conserve the medicinal plants and also to provide clear information about the characteristics and uses of each species. There are many types of plants around us that look similar but actually have different characteristics, which may be dangerous if consuming incorrectly and not identify them properly. As many people are now caring about the preservation of medicinal plants, they need to be aware of proper use of such plants.

Hopefully in the future, this conservation concept can be applied in all regions of Indonesia that have different types of endemic medicinal plants, and the information will be widely known by the public at large through direct observation. Therefore, Socfindo Conservation will support the ladies group from Labuhan Batu Utara to create this project, starting from the concept to providing the types of plants.

This is also a good start to trigger the spirit of other groups or organisations to enrich the community knowledge about medicinal plants which are of Indonesian culture and local wisdom. Let us conserve our medicinal plants, from Socfindo Conservation to Indonesia.