John Besche Joins the Class

Hello! My name is John Besche and I’m a junior in Morse double majoring in Religious Studies and Urban Studies. I first went to Southeast Asia when I was seventeen, to spend a summer living in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. I stayed with an organization I was working with (and still work for) called Forever Sabah. FS had me traveling around Borneo to various indigenous villages where I was able to conduct interviews and document oral histories for a journalistic format. Mostly, these had to do with payment for ecosystem services, which meant that various communities were seeking remuneration for protecting the water supply for Kota Kinabalu (the largest city on the island). I still write about Borneo! I’m currently working on a project with FS, reporting on conflicts of interest in development projects associated with the Pan Borneo Highway. I also write for the YDN and cover Yale-NUS, which at the moment means writing about public health policy in Singapore.