Frontiere planes in Indonesia: interview with PKPU

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Stefano Romano

We continue our discovery of the organizations working in the social sphere. Single people or large groups who invest their time and energy to help others. This time we’ll host an Indonesian NGO, dislocated in 14 different cities. We talk with Mr. ShadyArpenta, the PKPU Media & Communication Manager

First of all welcome to FRONTIERE NEWS and among its Italians readers.

In Your profile it says that the PKPU Foundation was created to respond to the multidimensional crisis affected Indonesia since 1997 to 1999. Could you explain better what prompted the birth of this Foundation, which the meaning of its name and when it saw the light exactly?

The Monetary Crisis which hit Asia from 1997 up to 1999 has scared us with Inflation that reached 80 percent for the first eight months in 1998. Unemployment has increased to as high as 20 million, from about 6 million at the onset of the crisis. In fact, the number of unemployed workers in 1998 was about 32 million people or 34 percent of the nation’s 94 million labor forces. It consists of 13.5 million job seekers and new labor entrants from earlier years and 18.5 million as critical unemployment due to the sharp drop in construction and manufacturing activities, especially among unskilled workers. And also it is because of an increasing number of firms on banks to close their doors and or a long draught in the agricultural sector (see World Bank, 1998). The number of people living under the poverty line is estimated to have risen to 80 million, or about 40 percent of the population. About half of them are faced with serious food security problems. This resulted in social unrests, especially in the less developed areas of the country, which are generally the eastern part of Indonesia and remote and secluded regions such as areas situated in the borders to the neighboring countries.

The Indonesian monetary crisis, which later became a full blown economic crisis, has transformed the country from one of the world’s fastest growing economy into its slowest growing economy. The slow results in the attempt of recovery has worsened the condition into a multidimensional crisis, a crisis which not only affect the country and people economically but worsened by social conflicts and unrests of prolonged crisis which hampered psychological expectancies of an improved future. And when we all thought that it couldn’t get any worse, somehow the nation was woken up by the fact that it is sitting on the hottest place on earth for natural disasters, the pacific rim of fire, there is no place on earth which has more active volcanoes than Indonesia, not to mention the four earth plates colliding, pushing and pulling away in the country. Frequent volcanic eruptions and frequent earthquake shocks testify to the active tectonic processes which are currently in progress in response to the continued movement of these major plates.

In the midst of all these problems there were groups of civil societies working on their own turf and localities with constraint capabilities but continuously bridge the rich and the suffering poor. Once in a while they had find the time to meet and discuss problems and success stories in order to sustain their general effort to help each of their own communities, later they realized that such sustainability could wake not only the local solidarities up, but in time, the nations’ solidarity. A national movement to bridge the rich and the poor onto a pathway for self-up heaving in overcoming the crisis from a bottom-up approach.

Such views were brought up and derived into plans and strategies by our founding fathers, professionals in their fields, an academic professor from state’s known university, a mining and oil professional, a medical practitioner, a religious leader, and a professional ISO trainer. They are people who are considered very busy and sophisticated yet have intense concern and attention towards social issues, globally and locally. Each opened up their networks and gathered young high spirited people who would want to dedicate their lives to noble causes. And so, after about two years working anonymously since mid-1998, they come up with a name that transpires their work. “…we are young people, in the effort of setting up the ‘balance’, hopefully resulting a condition better than before a crisis hit us, we have no sight for differences in classes, races, religions, and groups. All we are able to see is people in need, and so there we shall be…, and so there must be justice for all and hence it would involve… all. All, should participate in the rehabilitating, up heaving, developing of, all…”

Where would we stand? We will be helping, reminding, showing, and leading or empowering all to help and better them. That is why they will call us “The Post for People who feel the need to establish Justice and Care for the People” or Pos Keadilan PeduliUmmat.

Would you briefly summarize which is the spirit that animates it? And where is it located geographically?

The crisis in Indonesia has provided us with a valuable lesson in managing aid and in getting ones out of a crisis. Through this, we build our organization in the spirit to provide required relief to those in need, quickly. Because the more time we allow the crisis to linger, means the more ways we let it evolve and develop into more dimensions of crisis in the society. Of course, we realize that this was our first stepping stone and the very foundation of our intention to set our work, but we think as we set, developed and socialize the means and standard of working through crisis among our society and people, we believe that there are more steps to set and higher standards to apply. The foundation was first established in Jakarta, Indonesia.

What are the main clusters of the Foundation?

The main cluster of our work is in the field of Education, Economic, Social Services, Health and Rescue (Emergency Respond and Relief).

Are there any estimates on the number of beneficiaries of your work?

Each year we have target of beneficiaries to touch, and we are grateful that it has always met or nears the targeted number. In 2011, PKPU has 1,105,721 people, our target was to affect 1 million lives and we passed it.

The Foundation receives government aid?

Our NGO/Foundation is entitled to government aids, but we establish and develop partnership with both local and international community, private sectors, government and NGOs.

I was very impressed by the OVOP (One Village One Product): what is it?

It is a community development program focusing on exploring,developing, and optimizing local resources in the field of agricultural, animal husbandry, and forestry resources at a particular village which has been assessed to have such potentials within them. Such integrated potentials would then be managed, coordinated, and strategically managed in order to produce a specifically high valued product with a distinct uniqueness of the village’s way of producing. This is mainly to seek potentials of producing high grade products from a localized managed production effort which in the end would enhance the village’s general income.

The concept is compatible to Indonesia’s regional conditions which consist of a vast variety of natural resources but having distinct uniqueness in its every aspect. Indonesia is very rich in its natural richness, variety of cultural influence and aspects, and regional geographical uniqueness. All this is a great foundation in establishing OVOP as a movement for rural areas to creatively seek its best one-of-a-kind natural product/goods.

In your point of view in Indonesia might have application, or already exists, the system of micro-credit in rural areas, as in the Middle-East (I think to India and Bangladesh)?

Alhamdulillah! (Thanks to God) There are micro-credit programs in Indonesia and they are well-developed among our society. Even PKPU has been implementing this kind of program since 2004 and it helps the poor in improving their welfare and livelihood.

You also concerning the children. How do you see the situation of children in Indonesia? Speaking with someIndonesian government political sources revealed that the main problem is that of overcrowding. To which is linked the problem of an impossibility of the democratic government of Indonesia to impose a family-plane, such as in China. They rely to the school education, but that is problematic in the villages of the provinces, where there is a high school drop-outs. What does PKPU about this?

The statistics says that there are about 4,6 million displaced children, broken homes, living on the street, or forced to work on the street or some informal industrial workplace. However the government has already had some programs to overcome this problem, as well as PKPU. It has some educational programs for the children which are community-based empowerment that help them in improving their life skills, so that when they are not able to go to school, they have the ability to become entrepreneurs. Thankfully, now that they have the ability to survive on their own, some of them have their own business with income more than IDR 80 million/month or about USD 7800/month.

Another points that struck me are that of Wisata Yatim and SeRiBu, can you explain what are they?

For some children, enjoying the beauty of nature, having some fun in rides-zone, might become ordinary things to do. However, for the orphans who are from poor families, these things might be more than extraordinary. They may have never had the chance to do such things. Hence, PKPU along with the donors tries to provide some programs for the orphans that enable them to have fun by taking them to some ride-zones, recreation, or amusement park. This activity referred as “Orphan Tour” which is an educational program aimed to strengthen the brotherhood among the orphans.

SERIBU is one of the economic-empowering programs which is specially designed for the widows or single-parents as they are the bread winner for and depended by their family. This program is distinguished into some activities, such as establishing joint-venture groups, microfinance management trainings, providing capital for small enterprises and other empowering programs.

How you got there in Somalia?

It started when there were more than 200.000 people who were suffering from hunger in Somalia. This problem encouraged Indonesian people to help them, and many people gave their money and assistance through PKPU to be distributed to Somalia. Together with local partners/local foundations in Somalia, PKPU gave the donations to Somalia in the form of food packages, medical assistance, and water sanitation. Our intention is to help those in need, regardless of race, ethnic, social class, political, nor religious background. So therefore we maintain interventions and aids at many humanitarian events.

Finally, in your opinion, what should be the priorities of the Indonesian government to improve the lives of his people?

We expect basic things that become the primary needs of society such as economics, health and education are becoming top priority of government that should be done in an integrated manner in cooperation with NGOs as strategic partners.

A change in form of the rising of various sectors in economy, health, and education that is supported by environmental awareness within community is the major goal of the empowerment program of the Humanitarian Foundation (PKPU)especially in Indonesia.

Thanks for your time. We, as FRONTIERE NEWS, wish you a success getting bigger.