Why we chose Kinari as a Fellow

Kinari Webb first traveled to West Kalimantan, Indonesia as an undergraduate biology major, to pursue a dream of studying orangutans. Thirteen years later, she returned to the community in Indonesia to turn her long-held vision -- a comprehensive program that would both serve human health needs and preserve rain forest habitat -- into reality.

Poor people don't destroy their forests out of greed or foolishness; they do it to meet urgent needs. The costs of health care can be ruinous, as Kinari Webb observed when she was working on conservation of rainforests in Borneo. After medical school in the US, she returned to establish a clinic to provide high-quality, affordable care on the border of a threatened national rainforest. Her organization, Health in Harmony, works closely with communities to tie the provision of health care to the cessation of logging. She is working now to replicate and scale her successful work in Borneo.