INEGENA, FLORES ISLAND, INDONESIA – Wilfridus Ngala had a vision – to turn his village of 1100, most of them subsistence farmers, into an agricultural powerhouse with its own food processing industry and exports. Sounds far-fetched? It isn’t. After just a year of support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Ministry of Villages, Development of Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration, signs of progress in this community amidst the central hills of Flores Island are clear to see: formerly baren lands converted into horticulture fields, and chickens clucking along previously tranquil village roads. “Our village now has a future, and many young people have decided to stay and participate in the new agriculture projects,” says Viktorinus Roja, 30, who learned chicken farming last year and has been elected the head of the village enterprise association known by its Indonesian acronym as BUMDES. “A year ago I was thinking of moving on to find work in a city. But I’ve decided to give Mayor Ngala a chance.” Building long-term economic success Inegena is one of 1110 Indonesian villages supported through IFAD’s Integrated Village Economic Transformation Programme (TEKAD), which puts enhancing governance and community engagement in the use of village resources for local economic and social development at the heart of planning. In the case of Inegena and 19 other villages in the Ngada district on Flores Island, it is helping villagers design business plans and long-term development strategies, and submit applications for funding to the Rp 68 billion (US$ 4.3 billion) national Village Fund, managed by the Ministry of Village. TEKAD has hired a team of experts who work with the villagers. The funding mostly comes not from a grant but a loan, which the government and the villages will need to pay back from the proceeds of the increased economic activity. “Many times in rural Indonesia, money is not the issue. Insightful planning to build the basis for long-term economic success is,” says Harlina Sulistroyini, General Director of Economic Development and Investment at the Ministry of Village. “Places like Inegena are proof of what small funding and big ideas can achieve jointly.” The key, Ms Sulistroyini adds, is for communities to focus on a single product where they have economic and market advantage. In the case of Inegena, villagers with TEKAD support drew up a business plan to improve the harvesting and start local processing of candlenuts, the village’s main commodity and future cash-crop. Until recently, each farmer harvested the nuts, cleaned them manually and took them to the local market. As a first step in the transformation process, they are now banding together to fetch better deals from buyers. Equally importantly, villagers no longer need to make the one-hour journey to town and spend hours selling their produce – the buyers now come to the village. Oil extracted from candle nuts, which taste a bit like walnuts but softer on the palate, are used in the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries as raw material. The ministry will support purchase of a machine to replace the manual labour now required to peel the nuts, and will also provide funding for the village to buy a machine to extract the nut’s oil, Ms Sulistroyini says. By selling the oil rather than the nuts will enable the village to keep more of the revenues from the candlenut value chain. “We want to support villages with the vision and the potential,” she adds. “Inegena is a small village but one day it will go international – as long as they keep the focus.” Once the villagers have the oil extraction machine in place, planned for late 2023, they will also be able to process candle nuts harvested in neighbouring villages, Ngala says. “We are planning to become a local centre.”   Increasing production, finding markets While the focus in the village’s economic transformation plan is on candlenuts, there are other products where locals see potential: they used Rp 152 million (US$ 9600) from the Village Fund to increase the cultivated area around the village by 50%. Fields formerly filled with shrubs have been converted into horticulture plantations. Most of the chili, eggplants and cabbage grown is sold at the local market. Farmer Bonevasius Redo has already managed to extend his bamboo house from the additional income he earned during the last growing season. Thanks to the new opportunities at home, he moved back to Inegana after working on an oil palm plantation on Borneo for years. He now earns around 5 million Rupiahs a month (US$ 320), compared to just 3 million (US$ 190) at the planation. “We can now lead a life here by growing vegetables and chili,” he says.   Chickens and food security The aim of the chicken scheme, which convinced Mr Roja not to move to the city, is primarily to improve food security and nutrition by providing a stable protein intake to the community – as well as income from selling the surplus. There are now 2400 chickens in the village, up from a few hundred two years ago. The goal of TEKAD is to provide support in economic transformation to interested villages in the five poorest provinces in Indonesia, including East Nusa Tenggara, where Inegena is located. Through hiring and training local facilitators to work with the villagers, it ensures that there is buy-in from communities towards long-term planning. “In order to create the foundations for development that is sustainable, villages need to spend money on projects that will have long lasting economic benefits, rather than simply spending the Village Fund’s money each year on ad hoc initiatives,” says Anissa Pratiwi, Country Programme Officer at IFAD’s Jakarta office. “This fundamental change in approach requires learning and capacity building at the village level.” The change is sorely needed, as presently only 10% of the Village Fund is used to support rural economic development. TEKAD helps to change that by increasing technical skills and the market information available to villages, along with guidance and oversight in planning and implementation of projects. The villages it works in have a combined population of over 1.6 million – making it one of the UN projects with the largest reach in Indonesia. TEKAD is funded jointly by IFAD and the government, with the government taking the lead in implementation. “We are using TEKAD not only to help the participating villages develop but to also show other communities in these regions an example for long-term, sustainable economic development,” Ms Sulistroyini says.

Four vocational polytechnics in Indonesia are the first in the country to put in place measures to prevent and address sexual harassment and violence, following support from the International Labour Organization (ILO). It follows a new government requirement to put in place formal procedures to protect young women and men at learning institutions.  The government hopes the measures will help change attitudes on sexual harassment among the country’s future workforce. “Women’s rights are human rights, and in our school, both men and women, teachers and students are working together to make sure all can study and eventually work in dignity,” said Marike Alelo, Director of the Manado State Polytechnic, in North Sulawesi. “I hope that the procedures we have developed in consultation with our staff and students will help other schools in complying with the Ministerial Regulation.” Polytechnics in Surabaya, Semarang and Batam also benefitted from ILO support. Today (24 Jan 2023), at a ceremony in Jakarta, the government and ILO launched the Training Manual on Mainstreaming, and Prevention and Handling Sexual Harassment in Vocational Education and Training Institutions for use by polytechnics that were not part of the pilot initiative. Many young women choose to avoid programmes in male-dominated sectors such as the maritime industry. Fears of sexual discrimination, harassment and violence in study and workplaces, along with work schedules that are often not friendly to family life, are contributing factors to these decisions. “The Indonesian government has recognized that tackling sexual harassment and violence in higher education will be instrumental to changing mindsets more broadly,” said Beny Bandanadjaja, Director of Vocational Polytechnics at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, which last year issued Regulation 30/2021 on the Prevention and Handling of Violence and Sexual Harassment in Higher Education. “These measures will help women, as well as men, at the institutions directly – and will also have a longer-term impact in the workplace, once our students graduate.” Over 70 per cent of respondents in a recent ILO survey in Indonesia had experienced violence and harassment in the workplace.  According to the National Women’s Commission, between 2015 and 2021 more than a quarter of reported cases of sexual harassment and violence at the workplace occurred in higher education institutions. ILO support is provided under the Skills for Prosperity programme, funded by the UK government, which aims to increase the national capacity to achieve sustained and inclusive growth through the enhancement of skills development. “To unleash the potential of both women and men in Indonesia, we all need to learn how to create safe, harassment-free workplaces with mutual respects. Leaning technical skills is absolutely critical but that alone is not enough,” said Michiko Miyamoto, ILO’s Country Director in Indonesia. The measures include legal procedures and support for victims and witnesses.  They have been developed by task forces in each polytechnic, in collaboration with the provincial government, the local police and non-governmental organizations. “This project is a great example of how gender issues are put at the heart of an increasing number of UN development projects in Indonesia, focusing on the needs, well-being and empowerment of women,” said Valerie Julliand, UN Resident Representative in Indonesia. “We need more projects like this in order to close the enormous global gender gap and meet the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

TOMOHON, NORTH SULAWESI, INDONESIA – Situated between two active volcanoes, being prepared for natural disasters comes second nature to the residents of Tomohon. With support from the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat and the ASEAN Secretariat, the city’s leadership is looking to secure funding for an early warning system that could reduce response time in case of earthquakes, volcanic activity, or landslides. “We currently face a long emergency response time – and our goal is to have a system like in Japanese cities, where sirens connected to automatic censors warn people in real-time,” said Jean D’Arc F. Karundeng, Head of Family Empowerment and Welfare in the city. When these censors feel a tremor, no matter how insignificant , they go off, alerting  people to get out of their houses before they can feel the earthquake. When Mount Lokon, one of the volcanoes on the city’s edge, erupted in 2011, 12,000 out of 100,000 inhabitants had to be evacuated. “We were lucky because nature gave us enough warning,” said city official Royke Roeroe, who headed Disaster Management Office at the time. “But this may not always be the case – and with earthquakes and landslides, it never is.” The ring of fire Indonesia, lying on what is often called the ring of fire, is the country with the highest number of seismic and volcanic events in the world. Under current procedures, the mayor’s office is informed by national authorities when seismic or volcanic activity is detected, and then it needs to inform citizens. However, when the timing is crucial, this could cause delays, Ms. Karundeng said. Under the new setup the city is looking to develop, a digital early warning system would send text messages and sound the alarms. Tomohon, which is dependent on the central government for 80% of its budget and needs more discretionary funding, knew it could not afford to build or procure such a system on its own. What it did not know was how to go about soliciting funding for it. Under the UN Habitat project, its officials acquired skills in drafting project documents for submission to potential donors. Investing in sustainable urbanization With the financial support of the ASEAN-Australia Development Cooperation Program Phase II, the ASEAN Secretariat (Connectivity Division), in collaboration with UN-Habitat, implemented a regional project to accelerate the implementation of the ASEAN Sustainable Urbanisation Strategy (ASUS). UN-Habitat worked closely with eight cities across Southeast Asia to identify priority areas for urban interventions and supported them in articulating their needs and learning how to create viable project proposals. “The urban growth in ASEAN is happening primarily in smaller and secondary cities, as Tomohon, where investments – even if relatively modest – can have a great impact on communities and accelerate sustainable urbanisation,” said Riccardo Maroso, Project Team Leader at UN-Habitat. Tomohon zoomed in on issues to do with safety and security quite quickly in the process, Ms Karundeng recalls. “This is the main quality of life issue for our citizens, and portraying Tomohon as a safe destination will also help to allay the fears of tourists,” she said. North Sulawesi is a favourite destination of tourists from China, and Tomohon, with its cooler mountain climate, many flowers, hot springs and two volcanic peaks, and hopes to benefit increasingly from that. “We have tour operators who often question whether we are prepared for disasters and whether their tourists will be safe,” she said. Being part of such an international programme has yielded further indirect benefits, Ms Karundeng added. “We saw the kind of projects other cities are working on, which gave us ideas for future work, as well as a network of peers to discuss various development issues with.” Tomohon officials were particularly interested in the project by Kep City in southern Cambodia on waste collection and recycling. “Becoming more sustainable is the way of the future, and initiatives like ASUS are a great help for us in getting there,” she said. *** A version of this story was published by the UN Habitat, here

BUDO and MARINSOW, NORTH SULAWESI – As the sun sets over the Celebes see and its orange glow turns the horizon gold, two dozen tourists snap photos and marvel at the view. Even for someone local, the sun setting on the volcanoes is extraordinary, said a mother visiting from a nearby town on a recent Friday afternoon at the pier of Budo, a village of 2400 perched on the ocean, 25 kilometers northeast of the regional capital Manado. Thanks to support from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and its partners, Budo has increased its income from tourism fivefold and now appears on the tourist trail. It is one of four villages supported by an ILO programme that helps rural communities diversify into sustainable tourism, providing skills to local entrepreneurs, mostly women. Until a few years ago, the pier – about 300 meters long, crossing a mangrove forest to connect the village to the open sea – was dilapidated and used only by fishers leaving out to sea. Back then there was far more fish and no tourists, said Hani Lorens Singa, President of the Village Enterprise Association (BUMDES). Since then, fish stocks have shrunk and at the same time, with support from the government, the pier has been renovated and painted, benches and wooden huts added for the convenience of tourists, who against an entrance fee of 10,000 Rupiahs (US$ 0.65), can walk along and enjoy the view. Around a fifth of the visitors spend more – ordering local delicacies and drinks at the ticket counter with the occasional visitor also staying the night, Lorens Singa said. The food visitors order is prepared and delivered to the pier by whoever from among village association members is available.  “We share the work, we share the income – this is tourism at a human scale,” he added. Many coastal villages in North Sulawesi province, in far northeastern Indonesia, are historically dependent on small scale fishing. Women in these communities typically do not have an independent income. The tourism project gives them not just work but also fulfilment, said Olfi Seli Budiman, one of the new tourism entrepreneurs in Marinsow, about an hour’s drive further east.  Marinsow is in a mining region, which the government named a ‘priority tours destination’ and is supporting financially with the goal of diversifying its economy. More than 50 villagers received small wooden bungalows on their plots to start bed and breakfast businesses, or homestays, as they are known in Indonesia. ILO, with local partners Klabat University and the Manado State Polytechnic, is helping to teach the skills needed, such as bookkeeping, cost calculation and marketing, hospitality and tourism.  “I was very surprised to learn that tourists prefer their sheet white and a diversity of meals,” said Yeni Alelo. Ms. Alelo and the other participants have also learned the importance of using hashtags in social media marketing posts, so that tourists looking for a place to stay in the area find them more easily.  “Many of the entrepreneurs we work with had never been tourists themselves, so without training, it is not obvious for them to know what tourists expect,” said Mary Kent, the ILO Chief Technical Adviser for the project. “Our support complements the government infrastructure that had been put in place to stimulate village tourism, providing the essential entrepreneurship skills to launch successful community micro-enterprises.” The investment in skills for marketing and quality control in these communities is paying off, with about half of the few hundred tourists spending the night in Marinsow last year coming from outside the province, including an increasing number from abroad. Marinsow is a few kilometers away from the pristine beach, so before the homestays and additional services were developed, tourists had no reason to stop by. “All I could do is sell simple snacks on the beach,” Yvonne Kubis, a cook, said. “Now I cook full meals and deliver to their homestays.” The women’s small businesses are financed through microfinance credits, and they have been able to make all the payments on time, said Gabriel Tamasengge, the village’s mayor. “We are very proud of our women, of the business acumen we never knew they had.” Skills for prosperity The village tourism project is part of the Skills for Prosperity Programme, funded by the United Kingdom, supporting sustained and inclusive growth through skills development in three Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia. Its goal is to increase employability, employment and livelihood opportunities of beneficiaries.  To ensure sustainability of the programme, and to eventually reach more than the initial four supported villages, the ILO has trained local trainers, including staff from higher education institutions Manado State Polytechnic and the University of Klabat. Tourism specialists at project partner University of Gloucestershire in the UK have also contributed to the capacity building of these delivery institutions, helping to integrate the community focus into their standard curriculum and study programmes. The support to the villages illustrates well ILO’s approach in Indonesia, said Michiko Miyamoto, Country Director. “Our Decent Work programme focuses on social dialogue, job creation and enhancing the protection of vulnerable workers,” she said. Furthermore, it also contributes to the UN in Indonesia’s National Blue Agenda Actions Partnership with the government in support of the sustainable development of the ocean and coastal communities, Ms. Miyamoto added. North Sulawesi has 150 coastal villages with tourism potential, according to the regional government. Despite the improvements, a lot still remains to be done, said Lorens Singa in Budo, which was the winner of the digital marketing category at the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Economy’s Top 50 Village Tourism Award this year. “We need to offer more reasons for people to stay for a meal or overnight.”  One option could be offline marketing to get more foreign tourists from nearby world-class diving destinations within the Bunaken Marine Park to hop over for an evening meal and a visit to a typical village, off the map of mass tourism. They plan to offer cooking and handicraft classes as well as fishing trips. As occupancy starts to grow, they also want to build more homestays, Lorens Singa said. “Our task now is to make sure that when the funding from ILO and the government stops, we will have a fully formed business that allows us to stand completely on our own feet,” he said. “We had the vision, and we have the commitment – I am confident we will succeed.” *** A version of this story was published on the UN News website 7 Jan 2023