Business Training....how?
Last Updated on Friday, 30 September 2011 03:59 Written by Administrator Friday, 06 May 2011 06:52
Think about it for a second. Our goal is to empower the poorest people, we focus on women (and children) because in patriarchal societies like Indonesia they’re often the weakest.
But what is poor actually? I mean in Holland you are poor when, what, live from social service (800 euro a month)? Or below? You’re poor when you have to go to the cheapest supermarkets, eat the cheapest food, can’t go on holiday every year (at least)? The Netherlands is a wealthy country. There’s also poverty, but different. Although my salary was never that high, I don’t think I ever knew ‘Dutch’ poverty. In the end I had always parents who supported me if I needed it…
Now that I’m here I’m just discovering what poverty means here. The first time you come into a poorer kampung with houses made of bamboo shields and floors of sand you think ah, poor. Then you hear people are still traumatized by the earthquake and prefer bamboo walls instead of stones. In the area we work, houses were completely destroyed and many lives were lost. So, they can afford houses of stone but they don’t want to? Then you see a very skinny woman and you think again, ah, poor.. turns out that she suffered from TBC. Access to good health care is limited. When you look at her eyes, face, hair and body: sick. Then you see a person passing by at a brand new motorbike….waah isn’t that expensive??
Lastri, our MC Manager grew up in a poor village herself. I’m asking her, what is poor to you? Because to me, everybody in our villages is poor. But it’s hard to distinct different levels of poverty. How do we make sure we reach the people who need it the most? Are there differences between them? There are some big houses in the beginning of the desa, but then you drive further it increasingly gets worse. Ofcourse our surveys gave good information already.
She says I can see it by the way they look. Look at their clothes, their hair, do they look clean? Do they take care of themselves? The look in their eyes; bright or dim? Self-confidence….poor people are more shy.
Another Indonesian friend I asked the same question: what is poverty to you? His answer: if they can’t go to school, have no or not enough healthy food and have problems to go to medical care when their sick.
Some women in our groups can’t write or read. The only math they know is what’s in their hands: they buy stock until habis (money finished) sell their goods and use the profit for daily necessities. Do they re-invest? We don’t know, because….most of them don’t know.
We want to give training, but so far we train and at the same time finding out how to do that. In my last writing I told you some of them had no more education than elementary school, well….some have had no education at all. It turned out that they didn’t understand much from what I thought of my wonderful first ‘business training’ in Indonesian (that was my personal victory!)!! but they told Lastri: we like her, she is funny, good entertainment for us! (must be my excellent bahasa) When will she be here again? Haha.
So what are we doing? We just take it easy. Find out what they can, what they know, what we can teach. There’s a lot to teach them. Slowly-slowly-slowly……! Last time we tried to explain them how to keep a simple daily administration. Now they told us they don’t understand why they have to do it; it’s all in their heads…. So we explain again, and give examples, draw it out, let them practice. Actually it is fun to do, the women are friendly and laugh a lot. They also want to learn. Let’s see further when they master this. For us it's new also, and next month we will hire a new MC officer with experience in and business knowledge to improve our trainings. After one month we'll show the women what they have actually done, and how it will help to plan their business. Because in the end we want them to become independent entrepreneurs, who save money to send their kids to school, buy them healthy food and can turn to public health services when one of them gets sick.
Yogyakarta, 21 November 2010
