Indonesian Woman Wins ‘Asia’s Nobel Prize’ for Helping Poor

Jakarta Globe, July 28, 2011

Indonesian social worker Tri Mumpuni, left, pictured at the White House
 Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington in 2010. Tri is among the
 winners of Asia’s prestigious Magsaysay award this year for giving green
technologies to the poor, organizers said on Wednesday. (EPA Photo)

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Manila. Indonesian social worker Tri Mumpuni is among the winners of Asia’s prestigious Magsaysay award this year for giving green technologies to the poor, organizers said on Wednesday.

Award foundation president Carmencita Abella said Tri, along with an Indian engineer and a Philippine charity group, had helped harness the technologies to empower their countrymen and worked to create waves of progressive change across Asia.

Each year six people or organizations are named joint winners of the Magsaysay award.

This year the other winners were a man who set up an Islamic school for girls in Indonesia, a lender to India’s poorest, and a man working to restore democracy in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge murdered his father.

“Working on critical issues ... they are showing how commitment, competence, and collaborative leadership can truly transform individual lives and galvanize community action,” Abella said.

The award, often described as Asia’s Nobel Prize, is named after a famous Philippine president who died in a 1957 plane crash.

It aims to honor people who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity.

Tri Mumpuni, 46, was recognized after her IBEKA foundation built 60 small power plants harnessing the energy of water stored in dams to bring electricity to half a million people, the awards foundation said.

She was once kidnapped with her husband by former separatist rebels in Aceh province while pursuing her nongovernmental group’s project to bring electricity to rural Indonesia.

Another winner was US-trained Indian engineer Harish Hande, 44, for bringing solar lights to a country where half of all households have no electricity, the awards foundation said.

His Solar Electric Light Co.-India has tapped the sun’s energy to light up 120,000 households and is now one of the country’s largest solar technology providers.

In the Philippines, Dutch marine engineer Auke Idzenga’s Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation won for using an ancient, near-forgotten technology, the ram pump, to help impoverished communities on Negros island.

Re-engineered for upland farms, the pump gave the communities clean, cheap water for household use and for raising livestock, fish, and small farms, it said.

A ram pump, which does not need an external power source, harnesses the force of a large body of moving water to pump a small amount of water uphill.

The winners are to receive their awards in Manila on August 31.

Agence France-Presse

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(Photo Auke Idzenga)

Women find hope and empowerment

The Jakarta Post, Margaret Agusta, Contributor, Jakarta | Sat, 04/16/2011

Hand made: An artisan uses a wooden hammer to make wayang kulit
(leather puppet) during the exhibition. JP/P.J. Leo

The enticing strains of keroncong music wafted out into the Rumah Jawa Gallery compound at Jl. Kemang Timur Raya in South Jakarta, inviting visitors to step inside and see what the archipelago has to offer.

The gallery is hosting the Meet the Makers exhibition, which allows anyone interested in traditional textiles and handicrafts from various villages across the archipelago to not only view and possibly purchase the hand wrought items, but to also watch them being made from Friday, April 15 through Sunday, April 17 from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily.

Meet the Makers makes a point to provide visitors the opportunity to meet the handicrafts people, mostly women, whose wares, ranging from hand-painted batik and traditional woven textiles, mats and bags made from woven reeds, leather wayang shadow puppets, wooden handicrafts, and ceramics.

There is even one display of educational toys by the Yakum Craft non-profit organization of Central Java that empowers handicapped people toward independence through the recycling of discarded packaging into useful objects, like puzzles that can help children learn.

After all, this Meet the Makers exhibition is primarily about empowerment.

According to Ibu Luwek of Tende Village, Kutai Regency, East Kalimantan, who was sitting on a woven reed mat in the middle of the central exhibition space on Friday weaving natural tan colored and black dyed reeds into traditional patterns for a small mat, she is delighted to have the opportunity to visit Jakarta and share her skills and sell her products.

“The money we make is a welcome addition to household income,” said the small shy woman in colorful red traditional garb, her hair pulled back in a traditional bun.

“I am really happy that we can sell so much when we exhibit in Jakarta,” she said, explaining that this is her second opportunity to come to the capital to promote the handicrafts of Industri Bentuan Lestari Cooperative that groups 25 women handicrafters in her village.

Which one?: A woman look at masks in a handicraft exhibition
at the Rumah Jawa Gallery at Jl. Kemang Timur Raya in South
Jakarta. The items are from Azizah Craft of Bantul,
Yogyakarta. JP/P.J. Leo

“It has not been easy to market our mats and bags and other woven reed items,” she said.

“I finally approached the local Industry and Cooperatives Agency and we were able to get some guidance and training to help us manage our cooperative well and to find more ways to promote and distribute our products.”

Her cooperative also collaborates with the Borneo Chic shop at Jl. Bangka Raya 99A to produce sheets of woven reed that are then used to produce attractive, trendy modern bags on the basis of designs created by a young woman named Diana, who originates from Hulu Village in West Kalimantan.

Among the other cooperatives, women’s empowerment organizations and small-scale home industries with displays are Tafean Pah, which features traditional woven and embroidered fabrics of various kinds from the western part of East Nusa Tenggara; House of Lawe of Yogyakarta that features items made from the traditional fabric favored by the staff and guards of the ancient palace there; Asmoro, which features the unique designs and colors of the coastal batik of Pekalongan; Red Lotus, which features a wide range of hand painted batik items from Banguntapan, Yogyakarta,. and Pekunden, of Depok, West Java, which features pottery items.

‘Development funds for Papua among the highest’

The Jakarta Post, N | Thu, 07/29/2010 11:00 PM

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on Thursday for an audit of the disbursement of the state budget for the development of Papua island, saying that the achievement of the development on the island was far from satisfying.

“I think it would be important for us to conduct an audit on the special autonomy region development fund of Papua. I have received many letters, even accusing of our [Jakarta] carelessness for, among others, the lack of Papua’s development fund,” he said at the Presidential Palace on Thursday.

The President said that the progress of the two provinces in Papua should be far better than what were seen today because the government’s spending for the development in the two provinces were among the highest in the country.

Among the country’s 33 provinces, he said, Papua and West Papua provinces have the largest per capita development spending. “If there is no improvement there, then we have to know, why?” he said.

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Govt to develop tourism in 200 villages

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 07/03/2010 6:17 PM

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has selected 200 villages across the country as recipients of community empowerment fund (PNPM) in a bid to develop tourism there.

Director of Community Empowerment at the ministry, Bakri, said on Saturday each village in Java would receive between Rp 65 million (US$7,140) and Rp 70 million, while those outside Java would earn between Rp 85 million and Rp 90 million each.

The ministry expected the fund to help people in the villages develop tourism industry as a source of income.

Borobudur village near the world’s largest Buddhist temple in the Central Java regency of Magelang is a success story of the program, he said.

“People in the village were scavengers who lived under the poverty line. But now after their village has turned into a tourist area, many tourists visit there, creating many jobs related to tourism,” Bakri told Antara news agency.

The ministry only initiated the program last year, with 104 villages receiving the empowerment fund. The fund will be channeled to 450 villages next year, according to Bakri.

Nine Years on, Papuans Say Autonomy Has Brought Few Benefits

Jakarta Globe, Nurfika Osman, May 28, 2010

xLittle good has come of the special autonomy status conferred on Papua in 2001 with most people there left behind by the nation’s push for development, activists and community representatives said at a discussion in Jakarta on Wednesday.

“We haven’t seen for ourselves the benefits of development in Papua, despite being nine years into the special autonomy phase,” Papuan Students Association representative Agus Kossay told the Jakarta Globe. “Where do the trillions of rupiah from the budget go?”

He added most Papuans still lived in poverty.

“It’s particularly bad in the mountain areas,” he said. “We also suffer from gross human rights violations.”

In a 2005 study, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) listed Papua as having the lowest human development index in the country, rating it at 62.1 compared to the national average of 69.6.

Biak native and University of Indonesia student Yopi Paliama told the Globe that things had deteriorated since the province was granted special autonomy.

“The roads, buildings, everything are just as they were 10 years ago,” he said. “What on earth is the government doing by way of development?”

Paskalis Kossay, a House of Representatives legislator from Papua, said the failure of autonomy to bring change could be blamed on both the government and the people of Papua.

“Everything got messed up after the 2003 presidential decree establishing the new province of West Papua,” he said. “Now the development aims for Papua itself are unclear. Where are we actually headed?”

He also blamed the varying notions of that autonomy comprised.

“The idea as espoused by the central government differs from that touted by the local administration, which in turn is different from that held by the local people,” Paskalis said.

“Some of the people on the ground believe it means separating from Indonesia,” he added.

But Papua Development Planning Board head Alex Rumaseb argued that there had been a significant level of development in the province.

“There’s improved access to education and health care, and we’re doing our best to develop every part of the province,” he said. “Admittedly, though, it’s more difficult in the central highland areas.”

Alex added the main hurdle was how to empower human resources.

“Our biggest problem is developing the human resources to develop their own region,” he said, adding that Papuans comprised only 30 percent of the work force, while the rest were mostly migrants from elsewhere in Indonesia.

RI committed to rainforests protection despite financial constraints

Aditya Suharmoko, The Jakarta Post, Oslo | Thu, 05/27/2010 4:06 PM

Climate talks: Indonesian President Susilo Yudhoyono (left) and Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg speak at press conference during the Oslo Climate and Forest Conference in Oslo, Norway, Thursday. The conference was attended by 50 heads of state and environment ministers. –AP/Hakon Mosvold Larsen

Cash-strapped Indonesia remains committed to protection of its rainforests as part of the global initiative to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) Plus scheme, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono says.

"Working with our developed country partners, we will protect Indonesia’s globally significant carbon- and biodiversity-rich tropical rainforests while helping local populations become more prosperous," Yudhoyono said Thursday in a speech during the opening session of the Oslo Climate and Forest Conference at Holmenkollen Park Hotel Rica in the surrounding hills of Oslo.

The President's statement affirmed his pledge on Wednesday night that Indonesia "would conduct a moratorium for two years where we stop the conversion of peat land and of forests" during a historical agreement signing with Norway, which provides a US$1 billion grant for Indonesia in phases to protect the Southeast Asian nation's forests.

Yudhoyono also said Indonesia would preserve its forests "with or without international help".

But having financial limitations, Yudhoyono expected the REDD Plus scheme to be pushed forward.

"Cancun (meeting in Mexico) must produce a robust and workable decision. In this regard, a decision on REDD Plus could bring about the immediate action that we need to take," he said in the speech.

Indonesia still has a 14.15 percent poverty rate of about 230 million people in population, based on latest data released by the Central Statistics Agency.

In Indonesia, forest areas of a size equaling 300 soccer fields vanish every hour, according to Greenpeace.

Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said based on a March's international conference in Paris about 54 countries agreed to provide $4 billion in commitment to take necessary actions to protect the world's largest rainforests located in Brazil and Indonesia, which function as global "lungs" to transform carbon dioxide into oxygen.

"In today's market forests are more worth dead than alive. We want to change that ... There will be more (incentives) in leaving (them) than cut," he said.

He added that all developing countries should be in the driver's seat to reach the global goals with the help of multilateral institutions like the United Nations and the World Bank.

In his speech at the same forum, Britain’s Prince Charles said the time available to turn the words into actions was "running out". He also praised the agreement signed by Indonesia and Norway.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said he would look forward to a successful outcome in the next meeting in Cancun.

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