Pekerti teamed with Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Technische Zu Sammenarbeit (GTZ)
Another Germany-based organisation, German Technical Assistance Agency for Development or GTZ cooperated with Pekerti to give training, mentoring and guidance for market access development to earthquake victims in Jogjakarta and Klaten. The target producers are batik, wooden furniture producers, silk weavers and home industry. This training was given in order to assist community affected earthquake in Yogyakarta and Klaten, Central Java. Therefore, Regional Economic Development (RED) of GTZ RED cooperated with Pekerti Foundation to hold a program of economic recovery that focused on assistance aid for small and medium business in affected-earthquake regions.
Assistance/training on these areas were carried out in two stages:
Stage 1 (February-August 2007)
In this stage, this program assisted 72 small and medium-scale businesses in Jarum Village, Klaten; Sanggrahan, Bantul; and Gemahan, Bantul regions.
The program, in this stage structures support activities in five main areas, i.e. business group management improvement, business group management skills, product development, product quality, market access. The locations and number of beneficiaries are 20 snack producers in Klaten, 19 batik producers in Klaten, 9 furniture producers in Klaten, 14 snack producers in Sanggrahan, Bantul and 10 roof tile producers in Gemahan. The snack producers alone went from sales of 20 packets per day to 200 per group with Pekerti’s cleaver marketing.
Stage 2 (September – December 2007)
The program structures support activities in six main areas, namely: micro, small and medium enterprise recovery, product quality improvement, product diversification, business linkage extension, access to credit schemes through business group management training, and support of running business. The locations and number of beneficiaries are 11 wooden batik producers in Kembangsongo, 20 furniture producers in Tegal Krapyak, 9 silver producers in Kota Gede, and 7 bag producers in Patalan.
Before the program, most of the workers would work based on purchase order from their employers or intermediaries. Basically, they are expert in producing high quality products, but they were highly dependent on others to sell their products, so they had little or no motivation in improving their livelihoods. This happened because they did not know how to run business without any capital support, market knowledge and other business skills.
After the completion of the program, their motivation to run their own business was improved, which was reflected with these conditions:
- They were active in setting up business plans.
- They started making product samples, which later are promoted by Pekerti.
However, since this is their initial experience in carrying out independent production process, they still face difficulties in developing products independently of fulfilling large orders.
Therefore, continuous assistance can be given to achieve the independent producer groups. The assistance might be given concerning the overall business management, production, marketing, even capital access that will enable to gather capital to fulfill their working capital.