So the majority of work for my internship here is to compile a case-study of an Oxfam-funded programme implemented through its partner in Kupang, an organisation called CIS Timor. The programme, called LISTEN (Local Initiative to Strengthen and Empower Women), provides women in 4 pilot villages with a simple brochure containing some previously-unknown information pertaining to the village budget. CIS Timor then assists about 10 women in each village to set up a group (called Kelompok Perempuan Pemantau Anggara [KPPA], or Women's Group to Monitor the Budget). The brochure contains information on village block grants (ADD in Indonesian) which most villages receive to be used to develop the village and / or combat times of food insecurity, which are becoming increasingly common.
First a little background info. West Timor is half of an island, shared with the new nation of Timor Leste. Some might recall the bloody massacres in which Indonesian armed forces fired on independence-seeking East Timorese in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I recall listening about all this in 2002 driving to and from work at the ag station in Geneva when I was 19 and driving a tractor for the summer. (Amy Goodman was there in on the action!) But I really had no idea about where and what this new country was, let alone the island called Timor. So, an island half in Indonesia, half in another country, much like Papua. The people of both nations obviously share a similar culture, history, and language, but the people in the West seem quite content to remain in Indonesia.
Here is West Timor, including the "big" city of Kupang. You can see Soe above the 'S' in Indonesia. The little enclave in the north-central part is also a part of Timor Leste, cut off from the rest of the country.
West Timor is part of East Nusa Tenggara, one of Indonesia's poorest provinces. Statistics are stark: in the province as a whole (of some 4.6 million people) 65% live below the poverty line, over 80% live in rural areas and thus are subsistence farmers/ fishermen, infant mortality rate is 49/1000, etc. West Timor itself has 1.8 million people, high levels of child malnutrition and maternal mortality, many areas still lack electricity, and only half have access to potable water. Compared to the insaneness and apparent wealth of Jakarta, it's hard to believe these people share a common nation.
However, when one reads such statistics there is such a grim image in the mind, that when you actually travel to such places you expect the worst. I felt this while travelling in Africa, particularly in places like Malawi. You just expect to see insane suffering. Instead, you are greeted with smiles and curious questions about yourself. Ability to speak the language makes people immensely happy. Yes I have seen lepers, people missing limbs out begging, barefoot children picking through rubbish on the side of the road. Yes it is sad. But I feel like statistics alone do now paint the picture of life continuing, children growing, crops (hopefully) harvested, and so on.
I arrived in Kupang with two co-workers from our Oxfam office in Makassar, including Pak Aloy, the director of all East Indonesia Oxfam GB operations. Landing was crazy because you actually did not see the city. Kupang is around 250,000 but sprawls. However, the whole time I was there I had a driver and was always accompanied. I was fed 3 meals a day, had beers bought for me, and there was nothing I could do to protest. I stayed with a lovely family of one of CIS Timor's employees, had my own room, and even got hot water in the evening for a nice bucket shower.
Why was I there? To assess how much the opinion of women has changed within the last 14 months since the beginning of the LISTEN project.
So the LISTEN project is pretty simple in scope. It informs this local group of women about the village block grants, which can be from $3000-6000 a year, not much money for a village of 1500. But that money can go a long way here. CIS Timor trained these women groups, called KPPA in Indonesian, to conduct an audit of how the grants were being used. After their research, they wrote a report and presented their findings to the village chief. Sounds simple, but most of these women stopped school at age 12 and have never participated in local decision-making, let alone spoke in front of a group, or dreamed of presenting evidence to their village chief. So my job was to visit two of these villages and measure how their sense of self-worth and confidence, and thus their own capacity, has changed.
The women just received these brochures in December of 2010. Since then, it seems quite evident that their lives are transforming.
What is essential in this project is that a) it is implemented through the local partners who studied the villages, assessed their needs, and chose these 4 particular villages on purpose based on some criteria. The partners speak the language and are obviously more in tune with the local context. No white people swooping in declaring men and women are equal. b) CIS Timor just provided women with some knowledge, saying they have a right, by law, to access these block grants. Their message was subtle; they didn't shove human rights / gender equality messages down these peoples' throats. Instead, they let them realise it for themselves. c) CIS Timor is based in Kupang and can thus regularly visit and monitor the progress of the project.
Why are these aspects important? Development, as an implemented, purposeful goal, is and has obviously been evolving. We're moving away from the rich foreigners coming in and building a school or digging a well that we never even knew the people wanted. Case in example: In Enoneontes, the more rural and impoverished village I visited, a churchgroup from Bali had come in and built a water pump sometime in 2007. The project was called 'To Save a Village,' and they have a detailed website describing the project, the construction of the pump, and all the good things done in god's name. See the link here:
Even the title is patronising, I find. As if this village was on the edge of life and a few outsiders can come in and 'save' them. The website explains how life in this village was utter misery due to having to walk downhill daily to get water. So these good Christian folk came in and spent good money to build a non-electric pump. The took a lot of photos, posted all their good deeds online, and left promising to return.
Three months later the pump broke, and remains unused. And the church folk have never returned.
However, there are in this village several wells where people get their water, and I am quite sure these existed prior to 2007. I asked the village head a lot of questions about the pump so I am not sure, due to translation, if I understand right. I don't mean to degrade the goodwill of these people, but it doesn't work and a lot of money was wasted. Better they donate money to CIS Timor or other local CSO groups who have proven to have an impact of the people. Or install roof rain-water catchment systems, which are cheap and quite efficient. I saw only one on a richer-looking house in the village. I asked my colleague in CIS Timor why they don't do more work like this and they just said, 'No money.' Though the government provided funding to build 'modern' cold ugly concrete buildings, they couldn't spare some money for simple water projects like this.
But back to LISTEN.
Some background on the two villages I visited:
I visited Raknamo village, on a paved road about 40km out of Kupang. Here everyone has electricity, most people have TVs, there are no cars but some people have motorbikes, they dress in Western-style clothing, and are generally more connected to the outside world. (One woman, I recall, was wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, which I found quite amusing). The women's group here was quite dynamic and had some born leaders. They were not too embarrassed by my presence. We visited Raknamo four times because it was so close and it was hard to track down the village chief and some husbands.
Here's are 8 members of the Raknamo KPPA, and some of Oxfam and CIS Timor's staff. The woman in red is Gerneliah, the born and outspoken leader who hopes to one day be village chief.
Enoneontes village was a whole other world. Here, on a bumpy rocky road off the highway outside Soe (about 4 hours from Kupang), this is where I finally saw the people all the statistics had been warning me about. Here is a world where the possibility of food insecurity always hangs. Most people still live in traditional grass huts, there are no motorbikes or any public transport, people dress traditionally, some people don't speak Indonesian, the women have 5-7 kids, and the climate is dry. They try growing corn in the rocky, limestone excuse for soil, but the rains only come about 4 months of the year. There was one tiny little kiosk, a primary school, and no clinic. But, most people have cell phones, and they somehow get by as they always have. The villagers here were quite shy around me, I didn't see any natural born leaders, and even the men were timid.
The road to Enoneontes is bumpy and children like to come out and see the lone vehicle passing by. Future members of the KPPA?
My coming here was quite the occasion. They had a welcoming ceremony, gave me the traditional hand-woven Timorese cloth, and then they sang a church ballad:
So these groups of women in 4 villages conducted their audits and found that the block grants has mostly been going to physical infrastructure and not to community development projects. At first people in the village were suspicious of this group. Women were only meant to stay at home, wash and cook and raise children. Nothing like this has ever happened before. The village chiefs were wary as well as they felt their own work was being examined and criticised. Women outside the group could not understand how these women could find the time. The women in the groups were nervous, scared, and doubted their own abilities to research and write.
Here's the women's focus group. Unfortunately we only had one day in Enoneontes and I still have a million questions I'd like to ask.
However, after they presented their findings, the village chiefs listened to them and began to allocate money towards community needs. Hand tractors were purchased, based on the women's recommendations, and future projects are being planned around their findings. Women began to attend village meetings, and to speak out. Because of their enhanced role in the community, their husbands began to look at them differently, and agreed to help out in the household while the women attended meetings. They found strength and confidence in each other and had a support network. Foreigners like myself came to interview them, and neighbours could see that these women and their work were something special. So people's perceptions of gender roles and women's capacity started to change. Women in Raknamo village were visited by a Member of Parliament, their reports were published in the Kupang paper, some spoke on the radio, and tons of Facebook comments appeared in the media supporting their work. Overall, a good thing. Now the women have greater ambitions; they want more women in the community to join them, they want more training so they in turn can become facilitators, and they want to spread what they've learned to other villages. They want to start a climate school so they can learn how the seasons will change and agricultural means to combat a changing climate. They want better schools in their villages. They want to start small micro-enterprises to sell their vegetables or weaving. Their husbands support their efforts. The most common words I heard from the men and women were "proud, brave, and happy." As one woman put it, 'While we are still alive, this group will continue to exist.' They want their daughters to join. One woman wants to become the next village chief. And all it took was a little brochure and a little guidance. This whole project cost less than 20,000 British pounds. Now it is all but guaranteed that these small block grants will be invested in the future of the community based on the peoples' own needs. It may sound cliche, but it's helping people to help themselves in a nutshell. As I read in a new book 'Poor Economics,' by Esther Duflo and Abhijit J. Banerjee, 'It is not easy to escape from poverty, but a sense of possibility and a little bit of well-targeted help (a piece of information, a little nudge) can sometimes have surprisingly large effects.' What is important is to try and determine what the little nudge needs to be.
My greatest surprise in the interviews, apart from the apparent unanimous support from the husbands, was the reaction from the two village chiefs. I had assumed that they had just been stealing the block grants as I have this imbedded notion of innate corruption on the part of all officials here. Instead, these men struck me as men who truly want their villages to develop and increase the livelihoods of their people. And they both said that listening to the women, they've come to realise, is essential in meeting these goals. The chief in Raknamo, a younger guy, told me he hoped after his term a woman was elected, and that they have only just begun their work. Even the Indonesia Oxfam country director was impressed by this project, and he has 20 years experience of reviewing such endeavours.
Another of my favourite quotes from from the woman who hopes to be chief: "Before joining our women's group, there was no colour. But once [we] established ourselves in the group there was definitely color because we have a purpose, and that is to to change the mindset that real women's voices should be heard as well."
Now I have to take all this information, interviews, and observations and compile a case-study. Should keep me busy til the internship is up, and if it's good enough, Oxfam GB will publish it. Fingers crossed.
Overall, I feel this experience has really compelled me to want to continue working with women in empowerment projects like this. We cannot hope to battle all inequality and poverty in one fell stroke, so it will take a few villages at a time that can then in turn teach others the lessons learned.
First a little background info. West Timor is half of an island, shared with the new nation of Timor Leste. Some might recall the bloody massacres in which Indonesian armed forces fired on independence-seeking East Timorese in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I recall listening about all this in 2002 driving to and from work at the ag station in Geneva when I was 19 and driving a tractor for the summer. (Amy Goodman was there in on the action!) But I really had no idea about where and what this new country was, let alone the island called Timor. So, an island half in Indonesia, half in another country, much like Papua. The people of both nations obviously share a similar culture, history, and language, but the people in the West seem quite content to remain in Indonesia.
Here is West Timor, including the "big" city of Kupang. You can see Soe above the 'S' in Indonesia. The little enclave in the north-central part is also a part of Timor Leste, cut off from the rest of the country.
However, when one reads such statistics there is such a grim image in the mind, that when you actually travel to such places you expect the worst. I felt this while travelling in Africa, particularly in places like Malawi. You just expect to see insane suffering. Instead, you are greeted with smiles and curious questions about yourself. Ability to speak the language makes people immensely happy. Yes I have seen lepers, people missing limbs out begging, barefoot children picking through rubbish on the side of the road. Yes it is sad. But I feel like statistics alone do now paint the picture of life continuing, children growing, crops (hopefully) harvested, and so on.
I arrived in Kupang with two co-workers from our Oxfam office in Makassar, including Pak Aloy, the director of all East Indonesia Oxfam GB operations. Landing was crazy because you actually did not see the city. Kupang is around 250,000 but sprawls. However, the whole time I was there I had a driver and was always accompanied. I was fed 3 meals a day, had beers bought for me, and there was nothing I could do to protest. I stayed with a lovely family of one of CIS Timor's employees, had my own room, and even got hot water in the evening for a nice bucket shower.
Why was I there? To assess how much the opinion of women has changed within the last 14 months since the beginning of the LISTEN project.
So the LISTEN project is pretty simple in scope. It informs this local group of women about the village block grants, which can be from $3000-6000 a year, not much money for a village of 1500. But that money can go a long way here. CIS Timor trained these women groups, called KPPA in Indonesian, to conduct an audit of how the grants were being used. After their research, they wrote a report and presented their findings to the village chief. Sounds simple, but most of these women stopped school at age 12 and have never participated in local decision-making, let alone spoke in front of a group, or dreamed of presenting evidence to their village chief. So my job was to visit two of these villages and measure how their sense of self-worth and confidence, and thus their own capacity, has changed.
The women just received these brochures in December of 2010. Since then, it seems quite evident that their lives are transforming.
What is essential in this project is that a) it is implemented through the local partners who studied the villages, assessed their needs, and chose these 4 particular villages on purpose based on some criteria. The partners speak the language and are obviously more in tune with the local context. No white people swooping in declaring men and women are equal. b) CIS Timor just provided women with some knowledge, saying they have a right, by law, to access these block grants. Their message was subtle; they didn't shove human rights / gender equality messages down these peoples' throats. Instead, they let them realise it for themselves. c) CIS Timor is based in Kupang and can thus regularly visit and monitor the progress of the project.
Why are these aspects important? Development, as an implemented, purposeful goal, is and has obviously been evolving. We're moving away from the rich foreigners coming in and building a school or digging a well that we never even knew the people wanted. Case in example: In Enoneontes, the more rural and impoverished village I visited, a churchgroup from Bali had come in and built a water pump sometime in 2007. The project was called 'To Save a Village,' and they have a detailed website describing the project, the construction of the pump, and all the good things done in god's name. See the link here:
Even the title is patronising, I find. As if this village was on the edge of life and a few outsiders can come in and 'save' them. The website explains how life in this village was utter misery due to having to walk downhill daily to get water. So these good Christian folk came in and spent good money to build a non-electric pump. The took a lot of photos, posted all their good deeds online, and left promising to return.
Three months later the pump broke, and remains unused. And the church folk have never returned.
However, there are in this village several wells where people get their water, and I am quite sure these existed prior to 2007. I asked the village head a lot of questions about the pump so I am not sure, due to translation, if I understand right. I don't mean to degrade the goodwill of these people, but it doesn't work and a lot of money was wasted. Better they donate money to CIS Timor or other local CSO groups who have proven to have an impact of the people. Or install roof rain-water catchment systems, which are cheap and quite efficient. I saw only one on a richer-looking house in the village. I asked my colleague in CIS Timor why they don't do more work like this and they just said, 'No money.' Though the government provided funding to build 'modern' cold ugly concrete buildings, they couldn't spare some money for simple water projects like this.
But back to LISTEN.
Some background on the two villages I visited:
I visited Raknamo village, on a paved road about 40km out of Kupang. Here everyone has electricity, most people have TVs, there are no cars but some people have motorbikes, they dress in Western-style clothing, and are generally more connected to the outside world. (One woman, I recall, was wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, which I found quite amusing). The women's group here was quite dynamic and had some born leaders. They were not too embarrassed by my presence. We visited Raknamo four times because it was so close and it was hard to track down the village chief and some husbands.
Here's are 8 members of the Raknamo KPPA, and some of Oxfam and CIS Timor's staff. The woman in red is Gerneliah, the born and outspoken leader who hopes to one day be village chief.
Interviewing women in Raknamo in the shade of a banana tree. Curious neighbours passing by must wonder why I had come here. My presence alone gave more legitimacy and power to the women's work.
Enoneontes village was a whole other world. Here, on a bumpy rocky road off the highway outside Soe (about 4 hours from Kupang), this is where I finally saw the people all the statistics had been warning me about. Here is a world where the possibility of food insecurity always hangs. Most people still live in traditional grass huts, there are no motorbikes or any public transport, people dress traditionally, some people don't speak Indonesian, the women have 5-7 kids, and the climate is dry. They try growing corn in the rocky, limestone excuse for soil, but the rains only come about 4 months of the year. There was one tiny little kiosk, a primary school, and no clinic. But, most people have cell phones, and they somehow get by as they always have. The villagers here were quite shy around me, I didn't see any natural born leaders, and even the men were timid.
Here's the Enoneontes village office and its KPPA group, complete with breastfeeding baby.
So these groups of women in 4 villages conducted their audits and found that the block grants has mostly been going to physical infrastructure and not to community development projects. At first people in the village were suspicious of this group. Women were only meant to stay at home, wash and cook and raise children. Nothing like this has ever happened before. The village chiefs were wary as well as they felt their own work was being examined and criticised. Women outside the group could not understand how these women could find the time. The women in the groups were nervous, scared, and doubted their own abilities to research and write.
Here's the women's focus group. Unfortunately we only had one day in Enoneontes and I still have a million questions I'd like to ask.
And the men's focus group. They were much shier than I imagined, and smoked the whole time. I think you can pretty much read their body language here.
My greatest surprise in the interviews, apart from the apparent unanimous support from the husbands, was the reaction from the two village chiefs. I had assumed that they had just been stealing the block grants as I have this imbedded notion of innate corruption on the part of all officials here. Instead, these men struck me as men who truly want their villages to develop and increase the livelihoods of their people. And they both said that listening to the women, they've come to realise, is essential in meeting these goals. The chief in Raknamo, a younger guy, told me he hoped after his term a woman was elected, and that they have only just begun their work. Even the Indonesia Oxfam country director was impressed by this project, and he has 20 years experience of reviewing such endeavours.
Another of my favourite quotes from from the woman who hopes to be chief: "Before joining our women's group, there was no colour. But once [we] established ourselves in the group there was definitely color because we have a purpose, and that is to to change the mindset that real women's voices should be heard as well."
Now I have to take all this information, interviews, and observations and compile a case-study. Should keep me busy til the internship is up, and if it's good enough, Oxfam GB will publish it. Fingers crossed.
Overall, I feel this experience has really compelled me to want to continue working with women in empowerment projects like this. We cannot hope to battle all inequality and poverty in one fell stroke, so it will take a few villages at a time that can then in turn teach others the lessons learned.
