WOMEN ORGANISE TO FILL WATER WELLS IN INDONESIA

Elin Septiva from IISES (Indonesia Initiative for Social Ecology Studies)organises the women to deal with their water problems in Bogor Indonesia

This is about my experience with IISES on Community Organising. My colleagues & 1 from IISES have been facilitating a suburban community in Cibanteng, Bogor to deal with the scarcity of basic needs. One of problems that they face is water scarcity especially in the dry seasons. Many women complain suffer from this and based on their complaints we are trying to get them together to collectively solve the problem in this area.

Finally we understand that the water scarcity is because almost all the households depend on the water wells as a source of clean water. In the dry season the well experiences drought so the women have to take water from the springs that are located far away from their homes.

There is also water mismanagement. Water distribution is also not fair between upstream and middle/down stream community. The community upstream gets enough water to fulfill their needs such as for fisheries, agriculture and household needs. But the middle/down stream communities lack water supply.

The problem solving involves other parties such as village government, informal and religious local leaders as well as other communities. Recently my colleagues and I have actively facilitated the multi-stakeholder to discuss about the social problems related to water supply.

During the process, some methods that I learnt from our SEAPCP Advance CO course in Malaysia were found to be very useful! For example we use community video tools to help them analyse and understand the situation and condition. We know that this method has worked well as indicated by how the community has started to discuss what should they do, who should go to local government, and other tasks that needs to be done.

But we continue to challenge the people to keep their spirit to plan and organize themselves. Now is the rainy season so most of the community wells in Cibanteng are full with water. Due to this situation, the spirit and motivation of the community seems to have decreased to deal with the water problems.