Alha-raka use village women cooperatives as a media to promote socio-economic development as well as to enhance their understanding about democracy and good governance.  It is expected that these activities will be able to influence the development of economic activity initiatives, and to improve women’s capacity to get involved in the local development processes.

To strengthening people organization in the communities so they can do advocacy their issues.

In general, most of the community in the districts of Mojokerto, Jombang, Nganjuk, and Kediri of East Java province are living from farming activities, and the other small numbers of the populations have other professions such as industrial labors, traders and work in the services sector. Although most of the communities live from farming sector, but the incomes earned cannot fulfill their daily needs as they mostly have only small size of farming lands.  In some cases, their farm productions are also low because due to the financial problem, they have difficulty in accessing farming inputs such as seeds, and fertilizers.  In few years to come, farming lands in the districts of Mojokerto, Jombang and Nganjuk tend to decrease due to the development in the areas.  The government has also a plan to construct Trans-Java toll road across these three districts. When the toll road is constructed, it is predicted that it will influence the village’s development, changes the habit and attitude of the communities and business opportunities in the surrounding villages.

The other problem is that currently there are no financial institutions in the target areas that provide easy and simple credit schemes to the communities.  There are some formal financial institutions, such as banks, but poor farmers have difficulties in accessing the services because they have no collateral. There is also what they called as “cooperatives” in the areas but these are not real cooperatives as basically they are owned by money lenders who charge high interest rate to the borrowers. These all conditions continue as the local government pays little attention to improve the living conditions of these people.  With the current decentralization, the local communities need to be more pro-active in conveying their messages to get more attention from the local government. 

Understanding this problem, since 8 years ago, Alha-raka has been conducting various programs to assist the local communities to improve their living conditions through a community-based capacity building.  The assistance has been implemented in numbers of kampongs and villages in East Java province, particularly in four above mentioned districts: Mojokerto, Jombang, Kediri  Currently, there have been a total of 103 civil society organization.  In the same time, Alha-raka has also been facilitating the establishment and development of 50 pre-cooperatives, where 23 cooperatives are managed by women. and Nganjuk.

Due to no funding supports, since mid 2009, Alha-raka has been reducing its assistance to the target groups.  Alha-raka is now planning to only continue its assistance to only elected groups (especially for women groups). The reasons of selecting women’s groups are based on the evaluation that:

• Village women’s groups are more dynamic and have better solidarity among the members;
• Village women’s groups have strong commitment and motivation to improve their socio-economic conditions;
• Women have lack of opportunity to develop themselves in the organization at village level as traditionally women have fewer roles in the preparation of village development plans.

In this project, Alha-raka will use village women cooperatives as a media to promote socio-economic development as well as to enhance their understanding about democracy and good governance.  It is expected that these activities will be able to influence the development of economic activity initiatives, and to improve women’s capacity to get involved in the local development processes. Various discussions, workshops, and meeting with multi-stakeholders at the village level as well as to the upper structure of the local government will increase the participation of women to struggle for their economic, social and cultural rights as well as their civil and political rights.  

Purpose

The purposes of the project are to:

1. Increase the understanding of women’s group members about the civil and political rights as well as socio-economic and cultural rights.
2. Enhance women’s capacity to better manage their cooperatives so that they become stronger and sustainable financial institutions in the target villages.
3. Increase women’s participation to convey their aspirations in the village development processes.

Expected results

The expected results after completion of the project:

1. The groups are able to self-manage their cooperatives with they have better capacity as group leaders.
2. The cadres of the groups will have better understanding about human rights, able to participate to the village decision making processes and actively involved in their village development processes.
3. There will be recommendations accommodating village women aspirations and needs in the village development plans.

Justification

The intention of this project is to increase women’s understanding on basic human rights which include civil and political rights, and socio-economic and cultural rights, so that they are motivated and willing to actively take part in the village development plan and implementation processes. The project will use women’s cooperative as media to practice small business management and democratic processes within the groups and it is expected that these will increase their capacity to take roles in the village development processes.