'Bina Swadaya' excels in cooperation spirit

By Johannes Simbolon

JAKARTA (JP): The office you first see once you get into Bina Swadaya's headquarters in Central Jakarta, does not look that interesting, except for the notice attached to the counter, which reads, "Leader in Alternative Tourism".

Bina Swadaya tours and travels offers unconventional tour packages: ecotourism, agro-tourism, and -- the most unique of all -- study tourism. With the latter, tourists are taken to observe, first-hand, the problems faced by Indonesians in grassroots-level projects in the current developmental programs and to muse over the solution.

Since being set up in 1987, the enterprise's achievements have been impressive. During the peak tourist season, its tour packages are fully booked by groups of visitors from away as far as Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan. Some local non- governmental organizations (NGOs) have plans to set up similar enterprises for themselves and have asked Bina Swadaya to train them. Some overseas companies seem to have imitated it.

"A similar travel bureau was set up by some Dutchmen, in 1993, in Amsterdam. They named it 'Multatuli Travel'. And their motto is 'responsible tourism'" Bambang Ismawan, the president director of Bina Swadaya, told The Jakarta Post with smiles.

Bambang did not have the slightest idea that Bina Swadaya -- initially called Yayasan Sosial Tani, or Rural Socio Economic Foundation, set up in 1967 by the Pancasila Farmers Association -- would, someday, be involved in the tourism industry, when he and some friends founded it.

"The idea of setting up the travel bureau occurred to us because of our experiences in accompanying many people to tour our developmental projects. When it became so tiring for us to take around all the guests, we thought 'why not set up a special office dealing with matter?'. That's when Bina Swadaya Travel was born, and is now making profits," Bambang said.

The travel bureau is just one episode in the Bina Swadaya's long success story.

Started as a small NGO, Bina Swadaya -- the name it has used since 1984 -- is today been regarded as Indonesia's strongest and most established NGO, one of the few Indonesian NGOs which can solve the traditional NGO's illness, that of, "dependency on foreign funds".

Business

According to Bambang, it has, today, a Rp 15 billion budget, enough to renumerate its 700 full time workers, handling tens of grassroot developmental projects throughout the country, compared to 10 years back, when it could only pay 100 workers.

"We have self-financed our activities for 10 years. Before that, we were 100 percent funded by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung," said Bambang.

Konrad Adenauer Stiftung is a German NGO, affiliated with the Christliche Democratische Union (CDU) party. It started operating in Indonesia in 1968.

There is, indeed, no other way of reaching the self-financing condition except by doing business. In this respect, what Bina Swadaya has done is very impressive. Up to date, it has a total of 12 business, including:

*The Alternative Tourism division;

*The Trubus magazine division, which publishes the country's most successful agricultural magazine;

*The book publication division, which runs two publishing houses--Penebar Swadaya, producing up to 100 titles on agriculture a year, distributed through 585 local bookstores throughout the country; and Puspa Swara, specializing in publishing books on community development, health and literature;

*The agribusiness development division, which makes money through two enterprises: Mahatani, specializing in gardening, and Prasada, agricultural tool distributor;

*The division of development consultants, which gives paid consultations on social forestry, community water and sanitation, as well as environmentally rural economic development. Its customers now include governmental and international agencies;

*The capital development division, which engages in banking business in rural areas.

So far, it has established rural credit banks in Cimanggis and Subang (West Java), Central Lampung, and Yogyakarta.

Bina Swadaya might seek profits, but it is still different from other businesses because its businesses concentrate on the grassroots level of people enterprises, helping develop them either directly or indirectly; and, most of all, they are different in the way the profits are spent.

"Bina Swadaya is an NGO, not a profit making company. In the latter, the profit is to be shared among shareholders. In Bina Swadaya, there are no shareholders. The profits, if any, are reinvested in other grassroots developmental projects," Bambang explained.

To Bina Swadaya, however, business is not the only road towards survival. Experiences have taught them that a good relationship with the bureaucracy is also necessary.

"In the early eighties, we once had a plan to run a pump- installment project in a village in the Kerawang regency of West Java. We had gained approval from the village head, then the district chief, but hit a snag at the regency office. The regent said we should have provided ourselves with a sort of political clearance beforehand," recalled Bambang.

Gradually, Bina Swadaya succeeded in winning the trust of some governmental agencies. It has, up to date, cooperated with the National Agency of Family Planning and the Department of Transmigration in forming "self-reliance groups" among the family planning acceptors and transmigrants.

For years, the "Self-reliance group" or Kelompok Swadaya Masyarakat has been the model developed by Bina Swadaya in its effort to develop the economy of people at the grassroots level. In the group, a small number of people are guided in such a way that they can help each other develop their economy. The model is considered so successful that tens of development-oriented NGOs and governmental officials come to study it in Bina Swadaya's Campus of Education and Training, located on a one-hectare plot of land in Cimanggis, Bogor, every year.

The basics of the "self-reliance group" model can now be seen in the current poverty alleviation program, called IDT.

In fact, Bina Swadaya contributed to the program. According to Bambang, Bina Swadaya, together with some other NGOs, were asked by the National Developmental Planning Board to co-devise it, before it was launched by President Soeharto in April 1994.

In what can be taken as an acknowledgement of Bina Swadaya's contribution to the program, a group of Vietnamese officials, including one minister, came some months later to study the program at Bina Swadaya.

After three decades of dealing with the grassroots level development, Bina Swadaya has achieved many things, from expertise, relatively big money and costumers, to fame. Many NGOs have tried to imitate the way it seeks to survive through businesses.

This raises an important question: Will NGOs turn into industries -- community development industries? And what's wrong with that? Bina Swadaya will probably give a lot of answers to this in the future.