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Companies — both state-owned and private ones — can take an active part in supporting community development initiatives across the country.

Thanks to the advent of the internet and Indonesia’s flourishing democratic society, a lot of community development initiatives — in the fields of education, gender issues, economic welfare and many more — are currently flourishing at the grassroots level. Companies can support the initiatives by lending their expertise or channeling their corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds to these projects.

By supporting these projects, companies can inspire their employees by making them feel that they are giving back to the society and boosting the companies’ reputation all the while. In this article, The Jakarta Post presents to you two examples in which state-owned companies could align their activities with development projects related to, specifically, education and gender equality.

Inspiring community engagements

State-owned energy company Pertamina, for instance, seeks to inspire alternative education methods — one which is related to nature and literacy — through its array of activities with several literacy activists and Indonesia’s prominent education activist Butet Manurung.

For instance, Pertamina has been involving its employees actively in a forum organized by Indonesian state-owned enterprises (BUMN) called BUMN Youth Community, comprising various discussions and sharing sessions seeking to encourage the young employees to actively conduct grassroots empowerment opportunities on the sidelines of their working duties.

“We organized this program to inspire young employees to boost their careers and engage in grassroots activities by featuring high-achieving speakers in their respective fields,” Pertamina corporate communications vice president Adiatma Sardjito said.

Butet, the nickname of Saur Marlina Manurung, is an anthropologist who graduated from Padjadjaran University, Bandung, West Java. Since 1999, she has been actively running a community school for children who live in the forests of Jambi, teaching them skills vital for their day-to-day survival. She is equipping these children skills and knowledge necessary to protect them from being exploited by unscrupulous people.

Her dedication to alternative education initiatives earned her the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2014. The prestigious award was presented by the Philippines-based Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, which recognizes Asians who have attained high achievements in the humanitarian sector.

In 2007, she published a book called Sokola Rimba (Jungle School), through which she shares her experience teaching indigenous peoples. In 2013, Indonesian director Riri Riza from Miles Production adapted the book into a film.

Currently, Pertamina is still working closely with Butet, having expanded the activities to also reach local schools and communities. This activity, which seeks to provide youngsters real-life experience from professionals, is also linked with reading habit promotion initiatives, involving local literacy promotion communities.

Combating gender-based violence

In mid-July, managed services provider PT Teltranet Aplikasi Solusi (Telkomtelstra) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) on the adoption of Telkomtelstra’s cloud contact center technology in Komnas Perempuan’s report database network.

Telkomtelstra itself is a joint venture between Indonesian state telecommunications company PT Telkom Indonesia and Australian services provider Telstra.

The MoU was signed by Komnas Perempuan chairwoman Azriana R. Manalu and Telkomtelstra president director Erik Meijer on July 12.

The company’s cloud contact center boosts the efficiency and effectiveness of Komnas Perempuan’s report database network containing information on contact numbers and locations of gender-based violence survivors who report their incidents to the commission. Specifically, the solution features caller ID, which helps reduce human error in jotting down the phone numbers of survivors.

The solution also features voicemail, allowing survivors to leave a message on the machine when they are being threatened or intimidated by certain perpetrators, so that the perpetrators will not notice that the survivors have just placed a call to seek some help. Through this feature, survivors can also notify Komnas Perempuan on when best to call them back, e.g. when they are located far away from the perpetrators.

The digital system also allows the commission to keep track of each survivor’s individual cases, even long after Komnas Perempuan has referred a case to a different institution.

“The cloud contact center system seeks to provide Komnas Perempuan with a ready-to-use and accessible reporting system to support violence survivors. By upgrading its reporting database network, Komnas Perempuan can also expand its capacity to help even more violence survivors [get out of their situation],” Meijer said.

Azriana said Telkomtelstra’s service had also been very helpful for the commission to expand its network capacity, thereby helping even more violence survivors.

“We have been getting an increasing amount of phone calls from survivors lately, amid a paucity of resources to respond to these calls. Thereby we have an urgent need to boost our resources,” she said.

She said she was also concerned after noticing that the commission had received even more calls from survivors reporting cases of violence in the last few years. More alarmingly, as holds true for many cases of violence, these numbers reflect only the tip of the iceberg as much gender-based violence around the country remains unreported, due to a societal structure that oppresses women.

Komnas Perempuan recorded more than 348,000 reports of violence in 2017. In 2016, it recorded 245,548 reports of violence.

More than just conventional charity

According to public relations expert Prita Kemal Gani, community development activities that focus on holistic and sustainable intervention by empowering people with skills and solutions instead of just giving away money in “conventional charities” can help corporations to grow their businesses along with their surrounding communities.

“Such engagements are based on businesspeople’s awareness that they also have to pay close attention to the different livelihood aspects of communities living in its environment. They have to pay attention to environmental and education issues, for instance,” Prita said.

According to Prita, by helping their surrounding communities improve their life quality in a sustainable manner, companies also maintain the longevity of their businesses, not to mention guarantee their own financial sustainability over the years to come.

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