Projects

In Bersahara we thrive to enable women empowerment focusing on two main areas, Education and Sustainable Income Generation:

1. EDUCATION

i) English Classes: on the Education front, other than women, we are including children as part of our program, as they are the future of the country and have the potential to change many things. We have started english classes for 10 women and 35 children in Ujung Desa. We are currently in the process of looking for additional english teachers so we can start classes for other Desa (communities).

We currently have 4 volunteer teachers, two local women and two native men who are working on developing a Curriculum to be followed by all teachers as we roll-out to other communities.

ii) Literacy Education: We are currently under the process of identifying the number of illiterate women who would like to join a literacy training program, aimed to teach women under 45, who did not have the opportunity to go to school, to read and write, as an empowering tool.

iii) Technical Skills training: we have started this program with the Baturiti group, 22 women of very low income who are being trained by Rachel, our founder, how to make and design jewellery out of natural products from the Kuta environs, while Arianne will teach them how to control their own production and costs. 

Bersahara will further support the group by providing the teachers/facilitators and by marketing the products.

iv) Business Management Training: we are currently running a test with two different women who already own a business in order to asses the level of business management knowledge available and the key needs. This will help us put together a tailor made training addressed to help women grow their current businesses or start new ones.

Ayong Rosari: owns a shop in Ujung Desa and needs to expand her business offering different type of products so she can increase the income and pay for urgent house renovations. We are helping her analyze the nature of her business, of her income and her expenses so she knows whether she can pay for a 10.000.000Rupiah loan from a Microfinance institution.

Ayong Rosari in her shop in Ujung

Ina Yuyun: experienced seller since a teenager, she was a sarong seller at the Kuta Beach, Ina Yuyun speaks good english and has started a new business recently: door to door clothes selling for local women. She buys stock in Mataram city and sells in Kuta area. She started 6 months ago and is already making more income than her husband, who works for a hotel as a room boy. She is learning how to better control her business and house finances.

Ina Yuyun after our meeting in her house veranda

2. SUSTAINABLE INCOME GENERATION

For Sustainable Income Generation we have started with community savings and loans groups. We are following KAF (Self Funded Communities in English), a methodology originally from Spain (and introduced by our advisor, Arianne Martín). 

The Objective of the KAF is to enable groups of people to have access to easy and flexible savings and cheap loans, as well as to become a space for social and personal support, other than economical.

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So far in Indonesia we have created 7 KAF Simpan Pinjam groups in the Kuta Lombok area:

KAF Ujung

KAF Kuta Pakan

KAF Baturiti

KAF Bangkang

To date women have started saving (something which is not usual among low income people) and loaning to invest in small businesses (like selling fish, vegetables and clothes) and to cover basic needs like food, medicine, school expenses, etc. The KAF groups enable us to start working in the communities, building trust with the organization and among the group members and getting to know the main needs and issues to be addressed with other tools.