JP/4/poor

JP/4/poor

UNDP-facilitated recovery program benefits 150,000 poor families

Moch. N. Kurniawan
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

The UNDP-sponsored Community Recovery Program (CRP) is moving
towards a new phase emphasizing the empowerment of poor families
and the creation of strategic alliances at the local level to
help eradicate poverty in Indonesia.

Since it was first launched in 1998, the CRP has disbursed
grants worth US$17 million from donor countries to assist more
than 150,000 poor families through income-generation activities,
basic social services, food security and humanitarian aid for
internally displaced people affected by ethnic and sectarian
conflicts.

UNDP Resident Representative Bo Asplund said in the CRP's 2002
progress report that it had provided support for 896 poor
community institutions with the total number of participants
increasing to 150,000 households.

"The establishment of 15 new humanitarian coordination posts
in Ambon, Buton, Denpasar, Manado, Bitung, Kupang, Halmahera and
Ternate has benefited more than 83,000 people," he said.

He explained that the UNDP in cooperation with the government,
NGOs and facilitators had channeled funds raised from donor
countries such the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Britain, as
well as the private sector, to poor communities (IDPs) through
income-generation activities such as commercial farming, fishing,
marketing of products in the informal sector and seedling
production for reforestation.

CRP National Council Chairman Emil Salim concurred and said
the CRP would continue with more projects "to reach the poor and
to eradicate the poverty."

"We want to deliver a message that civil society and poor
people must and can escape poverty through their own initiatives.
And more can and needs to be done. There are more people today
living on $1 a day than there were in 1996 before the economy
collapsed ...," Emil said.

He said the council had uncommitted funds amounting to only
$1.4 million left to finance its projects.

"We hope that the poor people we have given grants to can
create a snowball effect by circulating the funds to other
prospective recipients," he said.

The CRP, which was launched in 1998, has so far received grant
commitments worth $28 million from Sweden, the U.S., the
Netherlands, New Zealand, PT Beiersdorf, and the United Nation
Development Program (UNDP).

To date, it has received $26 million of the total grant
commitments.

To access grants, poor people can prepare an initial proposal
through NGOs in collaboration with the CRP's regional
facilitators. At present, 28 CRP regional facilitators have been
appointed around the country.

Emil went on to say that with new projects needing to be
funded, it was imperative that the CRP increased its ability to
create a permanent trust fund.

"It will make the CRP more sustainable," he said, adding that
the CRP must also explore the mobilization of funds from domestic
resources.

Emil also called on other NGOs to start conducting similar
programs to help poor people fight poverty.

"We need more organizations like the CRP in this country to
help eradicate poverty," Emil said.

Emil criticized many programs that only gave out food to poor
people, saying that such programs would not improve their quality
of life.