Activist encourages the poor to be self-reliant
By Dwi Atmanta
JAKARTA (JP): Poor people are not so much the "have-nots" but the "have little" who need to join forces and stick together to overcome their hardships.
That is what Bambang Ismawan has kept in mind ever since he decided to devote himself to the poor almost 40 years ago. For that reason, too, the non-governmental organization he founded does not offer charity but encouragement.
"We do not give donations to the poor because they have all the resources they need to help themselves. We just facilitate and provide them with a series of training that will enable them to achieve a better life," Bambang says of the Bina Swadaya, one of the country's largest non-governmental organizations he now chairs.
When only 20 years old, Bambang was the inspiration behind the establishment of the Pancasila Farmers Association in 1958, an embryo of the government-backed Indonesian Farmers Association (HKTI). Bambang is currently HKTI vice president.
The HKTI was established in 1967 and, whether by design or not, became a popular mass organization favored by the Soeharto- led New Order government. The government left certain activities, particularly rural development projects, to Bina Swadaya to execute.
"I dreamed about becoming a rich person who owned a huge ranch, before a Jesuit missionary completely changed my mind. I felt shamed by his deep concern about helping the needy here, even though he was a foreigner," Bambang recalls one of the milestones in his life.
The Dutch priest, Johanes Baptisa Dijkstra, introduced Bambang to a devotion to the weak that cost then young Bambang his dreams.
"Many of my friends thought I was crazy, but I've never regretted my choice," says Bambang, a devout Catholic. Dijkstra, Bambang's mentor, celebrates his 87th birthday on Monday.
Now employing some 1,500 full-time workers in nine towns, the low-profile Bina Swadaya has been intensively involved in the national poverty alleviation programs in that it cultivates self- reliant groups and consistently promotes cooperatives.
The NGO controls varied activities and businesses from a small office situated on Jl. Gunung Sahari III, near the ever crowded business area of Senen in Central Jakarta.
Not many know that the government's poverty alleviation program, established through presidential instructions on least- developed villages, to some extent adopts Bina Swadaya's rural society development method of group counseling.
"We have no intention of taking a stance against the government because it would be unrealistic and a waste of energy. It's better to forge a friendship with the government to enable us to influence its policymaking," a towering Bambang says.
"It's a living reality that government plays a major role in development in the developing world," he adds.
The least-developed villages program is an outstanding fruit of the "friendship", according to Bambang, mainly because Bina Swadaya took part in drawing up its concepts, promoting the program and training people targeted in the program.
Bambang says Bina Swadaya does not advocate government policy, but offers dialog.
"Through this program, we try to show the government that it can no longer manage development from a bureaucratic point of view. Instead, the development program must acknowledge and encourage people's initiatives and participation," he says.
"In a way the program is also intended to plant the seeds of democracy, in which people realize that everybody is equal before the law. Their integration into their groups is expected to give them a new horizon of participation in policymaking."
Bambang was presented the Satya Lencana award by the government in 1995 for his efforts.
Microfinance
Bina Swadaya's core activity is encouraging poor people to save money in order to collect working capital for their businesses.
"It's difficult in the beginning to advise them to save, but later it was proven that saving helped group members who sought capital," Bambang recalls. The self-financing method is widely called microfinance, which has been a success in many developing countries.
"Microfinance is so far the best way to educate the poor about self-reliance. In many cases, villagers show expertise in running small-scale businesses, which is something university students must learn," he says.
Bina Swadaya also approached the central bank in order to gain loans for the groups of poor people it trains.
"First of all it was a bit of a gamble when the central bank approved our application for loans, because our laws prohibit bank lending to nonformal groups. The bank agreed after we showed it that the groups were good risks," Bambang recollects.
In its latest report on a program linking banks to the self- help groups last March, the central bank says 775 bank offices had disbursed Rp 7.1 billion in loans to 13,490 self-help groups covering 404,700 households with a repayment rate of 91.5 percent.
"It turns out that lower-class people deserve bank credits more than the tycoons who accumulate whopping bad debts," Bambang says.
He says that once a self-help group manages to rely on its business as a source of income, NGO activists can make a living from their services. "I dream of seeing an NGO position become a profession of choice," he says.
The collapse of the national banking sector due to the hard biting economic turbulence has adversely affected the self-help groups.
But Bambang, a graduate of Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University's School of Economics and one of the most senior non- governmental organization activists in the country, refuses to give up.
He invites a group of people who he says come from the middle class to set up an alternative financial institution to provide sustainable loans for the lower class.
"Up to now we have registered 28 people, more than enough to establish a credit lending cooperative," he told The Jakarta Post recently. "We have set a target of 100 members by December," he added.
A member will be obliged to invest at least Rp 10 million in the cooperative. It will offer a Rp 1 million loan to a group member with, surprisingly, an interest rate of about 60 percent.
"It doesn't matter, because experience has told us that lower- class people are able to make up to a 200 percent net profit," a proud Bambang says.
Bambang admits he is satisfied with what he has done over the past three decades. Born as an NGO which totally relied on foreign aid, Bina Swadaya has been financially self-sufficient since 1991.
"At least our employees can now live in their own houses, buy refrigerators or vehicles. Their children can go to school, too.
"To some extent we have been able to meet our needs from the organization we work for," Bambang, a father of two children, says.