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.

RIRIN ORGANISES "GOAT COMMUNITY" IN YOGJAKARTA

After the advance CO workshop in Malaysia in June 2009, I conducted a "big" internal evaluation of our "DESA PERDIKAN" project. We "down sized" our ambition to be more realistic and do-able. Currently I am focused on organizing the community in a village in Purworedjo that is known as the "Etawa Goat Village". Etawa is very specific goat and very expensive, and they are protected by the local government.

But currently, there are some buyers from outside (especially from Malaysia, hehehe..! sorry to say ya!) who pursued the villagers to sell the "A-class breed". They bring the goat outside the village, even outside Indonesia, and renamed the goat. If we cannot stop these activities, the village will lose their "specific Etawa goat", their identity and their main source of income. We started working with local villagers to increase their daily income, to prevent them sell the "A-Class goat" outside the village. It is really still the very beginning action stage. Besides that,

Currently we are developing a book of "DESA PERDIKAN JOURNEY". It is our reflection on organize the community to achieve our dream "Desa Perdikan". It will not be a "success story book" but a "story behind our experiences", it is an auto critic of our "foot print", so in the future, other can do better than us.

Sorry, I have not write anything in the blog. May be after we get some improvement in Purworedjo village, I will document it and share it with you.

Ririn, Perdikan Jogjakarta Indonesia

THANAM WORKS WITH YOUTH IN MALAYSIA!

I am still using SEAPCP's CO principles in my work. My role is mainly supporting communities in their CO processes and I am currently working with PGT group (Kindergarten Teachers Association) now. I'm start travel to many places together with them and give awareness about CO and FOI (Freedom of Information) through radio and journalism training.

I am presently focusing on women and young people in different areas like Taiping, Batu Arang, Jinjang and Johor. I'm try to educate them about their basic human rights (especially women's right); freedom of information(the importance of community media in Malaysia and how media is controlled by corporate companies, advertisement companies and politicians) and how they can be involved through CO processes to solve their problems.

We (CIJ and PGT) are organizing a youth Camp in February 2010 to educate them about their basic rights and encourage them to support their CO processes through producing radio programmes and writing articles to newspaper or create own newsletter. Although am not directly involve in the CO processes but I still use the principles in all my activities.

Currently I am busy with "16 days activism - end violence against women project" together with the JAGs (Joint Action Group for Gender Equality). In this project, we encourage women and young girls to use ICTs to create awareness about their rights. For example we encourage them to produce:

Audio programmes - script writing, recording and editing;

Make simple video - using photos, audacity and Windows movie maker software. At the same time we also organize a workshop - where we'll play simple video on how media portrayed women, then ask them to do discussion and produce audio programmes based on that ( what I have learned in the advance SEAPCP CO Course!);

Blogging - we'll launch a blog in Tamil on 24th November where we encourage women to write in blog about their rights and problems.

SMS campaign

Quotes campign

At the same time, I am also trying hard to develop jinjang youth as community trainers and try to involve them in internships and become model for upcoming youth.

My work is totally different from all my CO friends where they are directly involved with communities but I'm not. I'm doing it slowly. I've put my youth training pictures in my Facebook (feel free to see it).

S. Thanam
Community Training Officer
Centre for Independent Journalism