Indonesia

Building Local Capacity for Sustainable Social Change

Marathon is adapting lessons learned in our Equatorial Guinea operations to ensure that our presence in Sulawesi has a positive, lasting impact on island residents.

CSR efforts  began in 2007 in conjunction with planning for early stage exploration work. Through a participatory consultation approach, we engaged people in 25 villages along 62 miles of coastline. Residents formed Community Consultative Forums and participated in an open process to discuss concerns and opportunities.

Together, residents agreed to focus on developing sustainable health, education and income-generating projects. The Forums identified projects to address specific needs and developed solutions.

Marathon’s role has been to organize volunteers known as cadres, provide training and technology, oversee start-up efforts and help residents in developing a sustainable income source. Our Sulawesi CSR team coordinates with district and local government departments, which face challenges delivering services to remote communities.

Once local programs are firmly established, government departments have been willing to invest in sustaining them. As a result of working together to achieve sustainability, greater mutual trust has developed between volunteers and the government.

Fostering community development and social change is important to the success of oil and gas development projects, especially in developing countries. In building community relationships, our CSR principles guide us. Marathon’s experiences in Sulawesi and EG demonstrate that stakeholder dialogue, capacity building programs and mutual respect can lead to sustainable social change.