Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Indonesia needs community centres

Indonesian government area administration comprises levels namely, from top to bottom, central, provinces, regencies (and cities), districts, and villages. All rules, policies, programs and practices at these levels are strictly of government origin, and all officials are government paid. The village is devided further into smaller area units called Citizen Groups (CG) which are divided further into smaller area units called Neighbourhood Groups (NG). CGs and NGs are run by volunteers from local community members.
Daily life of communities is organized mainly by the village. As a government administration unit a village is directed and controlled by a district which is reflected in its program and funding.
CG and NG, being voluntary units, usually are lacking of funding and resources, so in practice, regarding any activities, they just wait for instructions and funding from the village.

The system described above has been implemented for over 50 years. I think this is the reason why community participation is very low. Local communities do not take care of their local situations. They do not have adequate ability, creativity and willingness, not to mention passion, to organize themselves to solve their problems.

During the 70s and 80s, when Indonesian economic growth was high and the government could spend a lot of money to implement many government programs the system didn't pose any problems. In fact, by practicing the strictly top-down approach the system proved to be effective in reaching development targets. The government just prepared instructions from the top and then drop the money to implement various development programs. And then we saw many success stories from national rice production to family planning. It was at this period we experienced how communities were actually spoiled, manipulated and lost their real power. They were trained systematically to obey orders and instructions given from above. Their freedom and creativity were suppressed. So even though their economy was improved but their ability to criticize things and organize themselves were sacrificed. They became dependant instead of independant.

But now, in the time of economic crisis we are facing multi-dimensional and multi-sectoral problems. In the last decade the administrations of four presidents have been failing to improve the situation. The quality of life of hundreds of millions of people is only changing from bad to worse. There is no single strategy has been proved to give any hope.

I think, this is the time to consider the power of community. As I mentioned above, communities in Indonesia has been spoiled and manipulated for a long time. They lost their confidence and ability to help themselves. They just wait and wait. So now we see everywhere piles of rubbish, messy cities, towns and villages, polluted rivers, street children and beggers, violent conflicts, and destructed forests and coral reefs. Unemployment, poverty and even hunger are suffered by tens of millions of people in cities and villages.

Communities in Indonesia should be empowered, and the empowerment should be started with proper organization. What ever the form of the organization is, it has to provide opportunity for community members to meet and discuss things. At this point I would like to propose the establishment of community centres. These centres should be independant from government administration structure. Each centre will be managed by a group of community workers which accountable to the community.
Each centre would provide specific services which reflect the needs of local communities.

I'll stop here, but I will continue later with discussion on funding, priority programs, monitoring (and relieve) of extreem poverty, networking, resources, IT support, basic library etc. If you read this please comment and criticize this idea. If you agree on the idea please write something. I really need your support.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Social Marketing

Social marketing was "born" as a discipline in the 70s, when Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaldman realized that the same marketing principles that were being used to sell products to consumers could be used to "sell" ideas, attitudes and behaviours. Kotler and Andreason define social marketing as "differing from other areas of marketing only with respect to the objectives of the marketer and his or her organization. Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviour not to benefit the marketer, but to benefit the target audience and the general society." (please check the site www.social-marketing.com).
[this is an unfinished posting]

Fund Raising

Please add here!

Conflict Resolution

Under construction