FAKTA Women's empowerment project

Background

FAKTA is a community-based organization that has worked with urban slum dwellers in Jakarta for over 20 years. FAKTA members and the communities they work with are predominantly Muslim.

The focus of FAKTA has always been the empowerment of poor and marginalized people.

Objectives

To train new generation leaders with particular emphasis on women. To empower 2 women in each 15 Jakarkta urban slum communities in leadership and advocacy.

Activities

Strategies for advocacy and action are developed in four areas of need: early childhood, education programmes in the community, analysis of housing issues and development of local credit union.

Identify 30 women leaders from 15 communities.
Convene the leaders for an initial workshop (2 days)
Leadership development: This takes place both in the weekly meetings and in periodic training. Most training is done through dialogue, hands-on experiential learning and reflection on practice. Conduct leadership skill building workshops (5 in the year). Develop public speaking skills.
Establish regular visits to the communities to assist the leaders on-site
Convene the leaders and communities for a celebration (end of the year)
Plan and implement an Indonesian-style local credit union in the 15 communities. The women will have identified the need for a new style of credit union-type activity that is particularly adapted to Indonesian culture. The first year they will develop a plan, research what currently exists in other parts of Indonesia. The goal would be to be ready to implement some type of credit union by the end of the first year.

Outcomes

Women are able to assess and represent the needs of their communities to government officials effectively so that the city can address these needs.
Women can now go to government offices and speak for themselves
Women able to facilitate their strategy sessions.
Greater ability of the community to address their problems
Greater sense of community among the people.
Modelling for the children - that their mothers are empowered.
More cohesive approach to addressing community issues among the communities of poor people
A greater sense of human dignity.