Indonesia on the ground

Posted 11 December 2017 in EMpower News, Grantee Partner News   |   Share

In November, EMpower’s Senior Program Officer for East and Southeast Asia, Gritt Richter, traveled to Indonesia to visit all of EMpower’s grantee partner programs there: ARI, East Bali Poverty Project (EBPP), Pamflet, the Red Nose Foundation (RNF), the ROLE Foundation and YKB. Three of the local organizations are provide information and access to services for young people to improve sexual and reproductive health (ARI, Pamflet, YKB), two provide job readiness and vocational training programs (RNF and ROLE Foundation) and one works at the crossroads of health and livelihoods (EBPP). Two partners work in Bali (EBPP, ROLE Foundation), two in Jakarta (ARI, RNF) and two in the Indramayu Regency in West Java (YKB, Pamflet).

In Jakarta, Gritt visited The Red Nose Foundation‘s newly built North Jakarta Community Centre in Cilincing, where she was able to speak with young people to understand the impact of the livelihoods program Red Nose Foundation provides for young people in an urban slum area. Asked about the most important things they have learned, the younger children (who participated in the English language and career opening classes) highlighted respect to others, discipline and responsibility for their lives. Young adults that had finished the vocational training program in hospitality valued their stronger self-esteem and their newly gained time management and communication skills, which they now apply in their daily professional life in hotels and restaurants.

Gritt viewed the strengthening of many partners’ programming during her visit. The ROLE Foundation‘s “BaliWISE” program, which also trains youth for careers in the hospitality sector, is expanding its training curriculum for young women from different parts of Indonesia to include classes on basic entrepreneurship skills and women empowerment. Pamflet, a vibrant youth-led organization with an expertise in sexual and reproductive health (SRH), is improving its fundraising and becoming more sustainable through a collaboration with an experienced consultant. ARI, another youth-led organization EMpower supports in the field of SRH, is taking important steps to enter a hard-to-reach community in Jakarta to deliver essential SRH information to young people.

EMpower’s two partners in health and well-being, YKB and Pamflet, have recently strengthened their collaboration, working in the same area of the Indramayu Regency. A training for teachers as part of the YKB program was facilitated by both organizations to strengthen the quality of intra-curricular activities offered in schools on adolescent SRH.

Unfortunately, the recent volcanic eruptions in Bali have interrupted the work of the East Bali Poverty Project (EBPP), and they have had to suspend the EMpower program for a second time as all communities near the volcano have been evacuated. The EBPP are now striving to bring classes on sexual and reproductive health (SRH), financial literary, computers and job readiness skills in modified forms to the young people in different camps.

We are incredibly proud of the work our partners are doing in Indonesia. The trip was very fruitful as EMpower continues to work with our grantee partners to learn, grow and impact more lives.