VERY GOOD INFORMATION ABOUT THE BEGGARS IN UBUD AND WHAT IS BEING DONE ABOUT IT: Friends, this was written by Daniel Elber a who has been part of a project to help the poor in Muntigunung, the home of most of the beggars you see in Ubud. Here is his report, below. (Please note that the original report, complete with lots of photos, and easier to read then here on Facebook, is available in the Ubud Community files department which you can click on above. I highly recommend doing this) I have been asked by Jack Blaylock to post an information about the beggars situation on the facebook page of Ubud Community. Even though we are not actively participating on social media , I prepared the following information: Muntigunung Programme by Future for Children/Yayasan Dian Desa and additional partners. 1. Actual Situation – to understand the problem The begging women in Ubud and in the South of Bali are mainly coming from Muntigunung, an area of 28 km2 in the very dry north of Bali, with 36 small hamlets, slightly over than 1000 families and a total of 5800 people. 12 of the villages have no road access and are not connected to the outside world. The people are disadvantaged and are fighting for a decent life. No water during 8 months of the year, no jobs, no income, illiteracy, a very high child and mother mortality rate, more than 30% of the people are still not registered and as a result do not have access to free health services. The population faces a very difficult situation, where outside help is needed to lead them into a self sustaining life. The people of Muntigunung are not considered to live with an immediate life threatening situation (with the exception of mothers giving birth at home), as compared to people who are suffering from major disasters like tsunamis, earthquakes etc and their aftereffects, where urgent material input is immediately needed to safe life. Understandably, people in the “Muntigunung Situation” still tend to be very short term and “fast buck minded” and act therefore mostly in a very opportunistic way. The easiest solution they have to improve their situation temporarely is to go begging in the rich south of the island of Bali. Begging is not professionally organized but usually done in a team of two or three families from the same village, either walking together or being brought by motor cycle, in some cases by an organized pick up to the places in Ubud and the south, where they are staying for up to 5 days in “beggars paradies”, before they are returning to their villages with enough money to last for a few days. The babies they carry are not always their babies as they are organizing themselves within the group. But one thing is clear to the begging women…..the younger and the more children they have with them, the more successful begging gets. As words are spreading fast in Muntigunung, the stories of successful or higher than expected results from begging or of comfortable treatements outside restaurants are attracting more families with more children to the towns in the south. For these children, begging trips might be short term fun, but these trips create longterm damage as the “begging business model” is shown to be a successful and an easy way to solve problems. 2. Programme Team and Strategic Objectives – to understand who does what The teams of Future for Children (A Swiss based NPO), Yayasan Dian Desa from Yogjakarta (the most well reputed Indonesian Development Organisation), Mitra Samya from Mataram Lombok (specialised in democratic village development) and members of the Medical Faculty of the Udayana University have been working together for the last 8 years, involving the population of Muntigunung to develop this area and to eradicate poverty. Funding for the programme is coming exclusively from Switzerland by private donors, members and foundations. The strategy and the activities to solve the problem in the mountains are developed by the Programme Team based on intensive discussions with the population and on assessments conducted by specialists. It is our aim to understand the problems in depth before starting any activities. Our strategic objectives are simple and measurable: 1. Create a water supply of 25 litres per head per day throughout the year 2. Create 1 job per family with a minimum income of usd 100 per month (means more than 1000 jobs) 3. Reduce child mortality rate of 90/1000 by 50% and 4. Assure an adequate education for all children. 3. The reasons for these four strategic priorities – to understand the solution. 1. Without water, the population (mainly women and children) have to walk up to 5 hours a day to Lake Batur or the coast to get 10 litres of water to their houses. With a sustainable water supply (including enough water storage facilities), we are not only improving the health and the hygienic situation of the population, but we release them from the burden of daily water collection and we create productive time for the people. Our water supply approach is based on “Rainwater Harvesting”, a simple and locally already used method, where we do not need to pump water over the mountains and distribute it through 50km of vulnerable pipelines. We are renovating the existing family water tanks, building one huge communal water tank in each of the 36 hamlets and assuring an education of all villagers on the water purification method called SODIS. The water tanks constructed (all manual work has to be executed by the population) are covered by huge roofs, which act not only as a water collector during the rainy season but as a meeting point, production place or bale banjar for the population in each of these small hamlets. 2. If we succeed to create 1 job per family, we assure a minimum income that brings all the families above the poverty line and allows them to assure a good nutrition for their children. In order to do so, we start with capacity building projects in one village after the other (cashew-, rosella-, palmsugar-, lontar basket-, hammock- , beachbag production and others), in order to bring the beggars back to their villages. Without bringing them back to the villages, the above mentioned objectives could not be reached. It is only possible to organise and educate the population in different topics if the men, women and children are in Muntigunung. If they are still begging in the streets of Ubud or Kuta, this would not be possible. A capacity building programme can take up to two years and is financed entirely through funds from Switzerland. Every participant is getting an education salary of idr 20 000 per day during this time (they are in this education process up to 30 days per month for a long time). After such a long period of training (one does not have to forget that people in Muntigunung are mostly malnourished and need much more time to learn) and after having succeeded to design products which are sellable, the capacity building project is turned into a commercial activity (like Muntigunung Community Social Enterprise, Muntigunung Community Social Handycraft Enterprise, Muntigunung Trekking) owned by Indonesian nationals, whomh have been working for the Muntigunung Programme previously and whom we have been training to become a business owner . In short, we are establishing social enterprises who have the objective to employ as many people as possible, to pay fair raw material prices, to pay fair salaries (up to idr 50 000 per day), to even keep weaker and older members of the community employed and to widen production and employment in accordance with the success of the undertaking. It is our philosophy to process as much as possible manually, in order to employ as many of the formerly begging people as possible. This in turn means that the social enterprises have to bear much higher production cost than an ordinary just profit oriented undertaking would have to bear. Even after having establishing these social enterprises, we still coach and train the owners in management skills (leadership, promotion and marketing, finance) in order to guarantee a slow, successful and sustainable transition. 3. When water and jobs are provided, it’s the first time that slowly a feeling of security and stability is developing among the population. Women are developing skills and self-esteem and are proud to be producing a sellable product. The mothers are slowly changing their previous role model as begging mothers to a more future oriented role model as “working mothers” for their children. The impact of this transformation on the lifes of these disadvantaged mothers and children is astonishing . When the prerequisites of sustainable water, jobs and income are fulfilled, it becomes possible to start developing the still opportunistic mindset of the people, sitting together with the population, discussing hygienic and health topics and village organizational issues, developing the motivation to build toilets and hand washing facilities and teaching the women of reproductive age about safer birth practises, exclusively breastfeeding and other important health topics. These health and village organization programs are being led by our project managers from the Medical Faculty of the Udayana University and are supported by Mitra Samya from Lombok and are involving government officials from the health departements as well. 4. Only if the children are accustomed again to stay in the mountains of Muntigunung, only if they have water, if their parents have a job with income, the hygienic and nutritious situation has improved, only then it is possible to assure that the children are joining school. Convincing the parents to send the children to school is a long term process which needs patience and persistence. Most of the parents have never joined school and have used their children to increase the proceeds from begging, so it takes time and persistence to motivate the parents to support an education for the children. 4. Results achieved - to understand the impact created In the meantime 17 villages (nearly 50%) are having a sustainable water supply of 25 litres per head per day throughout the yearwe employ 220 people around the year in 3 independent, successfull social enterprises (food products-cashew, rosella, dried mango, palmsugar production, basket production, trekking) and in 2 additional capacity building projects (hammock- , beach bag production) which are in the process of becoming independent within the next 12 months The trekking adventure which is guided by a number of part time working formerly begging women has been awarded with a global eco tourism award 2011 and is attracting a continuously higher number of inspired participants since starting the hygiene programme (Community Led Total Sanitation) 2 years ago, 25% of all the families are now having access to toilets two project managers from the medical faculty of the Udayana University are now overseeing in the course of a pilot project the health of all women of reproductive age in two hamlets together with a midwife. Women are being trained in safer birth practices and exclusively breast feeding and nutrition. 5. Future – to understand the future undertakings It is still a long way to finally achieve all the targets for Muntigunung, specifically to create 1000 jobs in order to make the inhabitants of this area economically independent, but looking back at the success story of the past 8 years the Muntigunung Programme Team is convinced that within the next 10 years it will be possible to successfully eradicate poverty in this disadvantaged region. We intend to finalize the water projects in the remaining 19 villages within the next 6 to 7 years to assure an access to toilets for all the families within 2 to 3 years to reduce child mortality rate by 50% within 4 years to increase the number of jobs from 220 to 1000 jobs by developing new products, by increasing sales of the existing products in Bali, Indonesia, Singapore and Switzerland and by attracting other industries to start producing in Muntigunung 6. How to support? If you like to support the development of the Muntigunung Region and help us to eradicate poverty in this area, we suggest to purchase the different products from Muntigunung. Every product purchase is creating work and income for the people, is enabling them to finance their own life and is preventing them from returning to Ubud in order to beg. Cashewuts, Rosella Tea, Rosella Sweets, Rosella Salt, Dried Mangos, Lontar Palmsugar, different products in lontar baskets are on sale either through Bali Budda, Bintang, Pepito, Papaya, Canggu Deli and other retail outlets, Beach Bags and Hammocks through contacting muntigunung by mail or by phone (0361424619/081 353 996 996. If you like to visit the area through the most spectacular global eco tourism award winning trekking and get to know the situation first hand, please visit the following link: zukunft-fuer-kinder.ch/en/projekte/trekking2/ or call the trekking number 081 337 96 62 40. Daniel Elber Founder of Future for Children
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 06:27:24 +0000
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