Sasak Modelling

Last Wednesday we went to Ujung village. We wanted to see the evolution of the design and sewing classes that our volunteer Babette has recently started with two groups of women.

Babette supervising Ayong's sewing

The final product, isn't it beautiful?

The Ujung group is made out of 6 women who have some previous basic experience with machine sewing and hand embroidery. Only 3 weeks after starting, the women have already finished their first pieces, a beautiful bag made out of traditional Ikat fabric (hand woven cotton thread), combined with modern trims and designs. We are really proud of them and very grateful to Babette who has managed to achieve this beautiful result in a record time!

To our surprise, the women had decided to dress up in traditional Sasak clothes and unexpectedly modelled for us! See for yourself….

Sasak Models

The women told us that they would have never imagined that they could possibly make a bag like this with their own hands and using their own imagination for embroidery designs. We had a great time!

On the way to empowerment!

Bersahara First Employee!

Ellen Pandia was born in Medan, Northern Sumatra. She studied Bachelor in Accounting and started her professional career as an accountant in a restaurant in Batam. After over a year she started looking for a job in the social sector and got an offer as an accountant for ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency), a development organization based in Medan. After 6 years she was transferred to Southern Lombok to take on grass root work leading a water sanitation project.

We met Ellen last year and mnmediately connected with her. After her job at ADRA finished last June we offered her to join Bersahara and we are very lucky that she accepted.

Ellen will be handling the Finance and Accounting for Bersahara, and will assume responsibilities to support and supervise volunteers and other employees. She will also supervie the savings and loans groups and initiate new ones. We also count on Ellen's previous experience in social matters to inspire and lead Bersahara to take on new projects. 

"Working with community at a social / humanitarian organization enriches me with many experiences and many lessons to be learned that I can’t have from a text book. It’s great happiness when I see beneficiary changes to be better in their life."

Welcome Ellen

The Biggest loan so far!

Ina Nisa selling her vegetables at Baturiti Kadus House

This month one of the members of the Baturiti Savings and Loans groups took a 2,500,000Rp loan to invest in her business. Ina Nisa travels to the Sangkol market, 20-30 minutes bus ride, to buy fresh vegetables and then sell them door to door in the Kuta area.

This loan was to be invested in her travel expenses so she could increase the number of times she goes to the market and therefore slowly expand her business. For perspective, the minimum wage per month in NTB province in 2011 was of 950,000Rp, while the average monthly salary was of 1,347,119Rp (Source: Indonesia BPS Statistics). This means that Ina Nisa has managed to obtain a loan that is almost 2 times the average monthly salary of an employee in the NTB province.

This has been possible thanks to the KAF commnunity savings and loans methodology that we started 10 months ago in the area, which enables women to help each other  with small loans, without the need to depend on external funds.

Group Event in Kuta Beach

Last Saturday July the 14^th we had the second Bersahara women gathering in Kuta Beach. As new groups join we wanted to make sure that they get to know other groups, exchange experiences and have fun together.

Again we had some time to reflect about the good things about being a woman and also about the most difficult things that women face. As we found out last time, women in the groups find child bearing and family caring as the best thing of being women. Generally, the biggest difficulties are related to the burden of having to do all the household work alone and having to deal with angry husbands. 

According to the National Population Census by BPS Indonesia, Nusa Tenggara Barat (NTB) province has one of the lowest sex ratio in Indonesia, at 94% vs. 101 for total Indonesia, which means there are more women than men. With 1,252,000 Households, at an average size of 3.6members/household, the province has the lowest literacy rate of all Indonesia (after Papua) for both men and women, at 86% and 77% respectively (vs. 95% and 90% for national average). On average, men will attend school an average of 7 years, while for girls the average drops to 6 years. This, together with the low GDP/capita explains that the province holds the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) in the country, at 65,2% vs 72,7% national average.

Despite their difficult situation we find these women incredibly patient, hard working and willing to learn and improve every day.

We hope that our efforts to educate women and support them in generating an income will slowly contribute to the improvement of human development of the area, and particularly in the empowerment of these women so they are able to choose their own future.

One more group!

A few kilometres out of Kuta, up in the mountains and through a remote and dense bamboo and coconut forest is the small village of Bunlesung, home to the 11 women who have started the 6th savings and loans group in Kuta Lombok area.

Bunlesung is surrounded by thick wild vegetation mainly of coconut trees. There is no electricity supply or running water. The women in the villages have to walk to the only well in the village every day to fetch the water for cooking, cleaning and bathing. The luckiest families who have a little “pool” (as they call it) can buy the water from the nearest town with a natural spring water and have it delivered regularly by a truck. The road to this village is a dirt track full of stones and potholes, we can only imagine how this road will look like in the rainy season.

The road to Bunlesung

Families live of the land and farming cows. The women have learnt how to make Virgin coconut oil with rain water and are very creative with every day needs since the nearest shop is 20 min. away by motorbike.

We are received at Arian’s house (known as Ina Opa in the village, leader of the group), who offers us some home made snacks and young coconuts fresh from the trees and sipped through a natural papaya stem straw!

Arian's house in Bunlesung

Arianne and Arian

Arian has been trained by Arianne so that she can train the women in the nearby villages how to start their own savings and loans groups. 

We hope the group can start helping  each other through the savings and loans, and we are already thinking of ways we can help them sell their coconut oil or help them generate additional income!

Thanks to Babette and Kirsten who helped us with the new group

Welcome Bunlesung women!

Our first Volunteer!

Babette looking at ikats weaving

Babette, a half Spanish and half French woman, landed last week in the new international airport of Lombok. She has come to volunteer with Bersahara for 3 months. Babette is an experienced business woman who has travelled the world supporting women in different countries (like India, Iran, Myanmar and Mali), teaching them how to design fashion items using local fabrics and techniques.

Babette shopping in Mataram

Shopping for Ikats in Sukarara traditional village

Babette will be working with some of the groups teaching them how to make bags, sarongs and other items out of the beautiful and traditional Ikats and Songkets fabrics.

She has only been with us for a little more than a week and she can already speak a little Bahasa Indonesia! We are very happy to have her with us and believe that her contribution will be of great help for the women in Kuta Lombok.

Facing Life

Ina Yuyun is 25 years old, she has a seven year old daughter and has been married since she was 17. She is from Sade, a traditional Sasak village in Southern Lombok known for their weaving. As many other young teenagers from Sade, Ina Yuyun started coming to Kuta very young to sell the sarongs that her family would weave. This is how she learnt her English and developed her skills as a seller, which you would never imagine as she is a quite and apparently shy person. Here in Kuta she met her husband and got married.

8  months ago she started a new business: door to door clothes selling. She enjoys selling but was tired of working for tourists so she decided to target the local people. She now buys clothes in the wholesaler shops in Mataram city and sells them in the different villages around Kuta. She asked us for advice on how to improve her business. We started supervising her income and expenses figures, to help her understand it better, and realised that she was making more income than her husband, who worked for a Hotel.

Women from Sade selling sarongs in Kuta Beach

3 months ago the police came to her house and registered every corner, finding what they were looking for. Apparently her husband had got involved in some kind of drug dealing and is now awaiting sentencing for the time in prison.  So Ina Yuyun has been left alone to take care of the house and their girl. One week ago she took a 1.450.000Rp loan from the group. She said it was for her business. Today we found out that she has bought some bamboo and wood to build a little stall in the local market. She has decided to start selling in the market, as well as door to door, and is busy getting all ready before Ramadan starts: the perfect timing when every Muslim spends more money in presents for others.

Ina Yuyun as "accountant responsible" for the Savings and loans group

Again, we are proud of Ina Yuyun’s  strength and courage and wish her all the best with her new extended business.

Business Women in Southern Lombok

Ayong Rosari is Indonesian Chinese. Married to a Sasak man in Lombok, she has not lost the apparently inherent skill to Chinese people: she has a natural sense for business.

Ayong has one single child (she still follows the Chinese imposed tradition of having only one kid), and owns the only shop in Ujung, where she also lives. She is in charge of the shop and makes the only income for the family. Her husband farms a family land for rice 6-7 months a year, during the rainy season, contributing to the family income in kind. 

Ayong is part of the Ujung savings and loans group and she made a commitment to herself of saving 50,000Rp every month. 5 months after the group started she asked us for help to manage her business.  We went to her shop, in the front of her house. She invited us to see her house: it was falling apart. The roofs to the kitchen and the bedroom were completely broken, so they were sleeping in the outdoor “beruga” (see picture), which had also a broken roof covered with a plastic to protect them from the rains. She told us she wanted to fix the house but was afraid of investing her earnings on this as she was not sure she could afford it. She wanted to take a loan from the group but thought she needed much more than she could access.

The old room converted into kitchen

The open "beruga" converted into a family bedroom

We started teaching her to make a monthly record of income and expenses, so we could better understand her business. After 3 months we found out that she was making an average profit of 3.5MillionRp every month!! (For perspective the minimum monthly wage in Indonesia is 1.25Million). Although this helped her realise she was making money, she was still not sure of spending it as she was worried because many of her sales are made on credit and she was afraid people would not pay back and would therefore not have enough money to continue with the business or pay for her daily expenses.

We left her to think about it and to our very great surprise, the next month when we came to check her numbers she had fixed everything: new roofs, new kitchen, new room, and even a new electricity connection so she can buy a fridge and expand her business introducing vegetables and cold drinks! We asked her how she had done it and she said, “with my the benefits from the business and a 1 million Rp loan I took from the group”. 

We feel very happy for Ayong and her family!

Being Born in Indonesia

Ina Ana, 7 months pregnant, receiving her first loan from the group

A few days ago, only one week before delivery due date, Ina Ana was coming out of her house when she fell down. Her husband, the Kadus from Baturiti Desa, drove her immediately to the hospital in Praya. By the time they arrived the doctor said the baby girl was already dead. They are not sure whether Ina Ana fell because the baby had been dead in her womb for a few days, or whether the baby died because of the fall. This was the second child for Ina Ana and her husband.

If you are a woman in Indonesia the chances that you get pregnant while an adolescent are 45 out of 100 (Adolescent fertility rate @ 45,1%)*. Still only 57% of Indonesian women will use a contraceptive method (mainly the contraceptive injection), still well below the average of 76,9% contraceptive use in East and Pacific Region countries, where Indonesia is included.  If pregnant, most women will have at least one ante-natal visit during pregnancy (93%), however only 75% of them will be attended by a skilled professional at birth (vs. 91,9% for Region average).   Therefore Indonesian women have a higher risk of death at birth (240 out of every 100,000 live births, vs. 79 for the regional average). Although the fertility rate is well below the lowest development index countries, Indonesian women will have an average of 2,1 children (vs. 1.8 for the region), who will then have a 41% chance of making it after 5 years old (mortality rate below 5 years is 39%, well above regional 26%).

* All statistics source: UNDP 2011 Human Development Global Statistics

Lombok being part of the least developed province in Indonesia after Papua, Nusa Tenggara Barat has a low 65,2% HDI (Human Development Index), vs. 72.7% for Indonesia, (source Badan Pusat Statistik Indonesia 2010), one of the highest fertility rates in Indonesia, and one of the highest under five infant mortality death rate in the country. 

Bersahara is therefore considering initiating a basic health and maternal centre to attend these primary basic and important needs in Southern Lombok.

Kartini Day

Ibu Kartini (photo from google)

"Ibu Kartini", how many Indonesians call her, is a national heroine recognized as the first women to fight for the rights of Indonesian women.

Last April 21st the Indonesians celebrated the "Kartini Day", a national holiday, time to remember this incredible and forward women, who was born in Dutch colonized Indonesia to a wealthy and well-educated family. 

She was lucky to attend school until 12, most women back then and even today did not, and learnt Dutch. Although following local traditions she then had to retire home to prepare for marriage, Kartini used her language skills and found several pen pals, many of them women in Holland who would share with her the European feminist thinking and magazines which inspired Kartini to work for the emancipation of women in her country, their struggles for freedom, autonomy and equality. She started a school for women before she died young after giving birth to her first and only child.

Today Indonesia has many "Kartini Schools" who honour the values and work of this inspirational Indonesian women.

From Bersahara we feel in debt to continue Kartini's work in her country.