By: A. Robi

 

The Statistic Body has reported the number of poor people in 2007 was 37.17 persons or 16.58% of total population during period of March 2006-2007. Poverty in Indonesia is an irony as this country is rich in both land and ocean, from Sabang to Merauke. We are rich in fishery, mining, forestry, plantation, and other potencies. Unfortunately, these overwhelming richness are still not be able to give good welfare to the people.

Poverty is a complex problem in Indonesia. When we talk about poverty, we will not talk only about the low income, but we will also talk about level of education, health, work performance and other bad things. The complexity of poverty  needs an integrated effort from many related parties in order to decrease the poverty through programs/activities that have objectives to empower the poors, marginalised, and oppressed families, so that the civilians could live independently and having strong bargaining position. Among the activist, it is called community empowerment or community development (CD).

The Program of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) that are now conducted by the corporation could be one of many ways to do community strengthening. As the issue of global environment is developing, the concept and implementation of CSR is also developing even more. It is not only becoming social obligation of corporation, but should  relate it with the concept of sustainable development. However, it is so unfortunate that since the standard and guidance of community empowerment has not been set yet, then the CSRs seem only to be done accidentally, such as aids for  disaster’s victims, charitable activities etc. The CSR shall not be conducted in the aspect of philantrophy, but have to get to higher level to the community empowerment, creating partnerships with related parties and should be included in corporate’s management policies.

The awareness of corporations/donors need to be seen as big potencyof money  in order to empower the community. Good optimalisation in allocating the funds as well as the process of making good of the funds could be one of alternative solutions for poverty alleviation. The spirit of philantrophy, CSR and other public awareness activities could also become the link between the importances of corporations/donors  and the community, so that the relationship between these two parties could work better in harmony and  give advantages to eah other.

There are several factors that influencing partnership in community strengthening. They are : enough resources, support from top management level, trust, long term commitment, effective communication, efficient coordination and productive conflict resolutions. These factors need to be regularly and systemically monitored and evaluated, in order to collect inputs from partners, especially of  success factors (including the parameters), obstacles, and anticipation.

Partnership in community strengthening is becoming issue and practice that always developing through the times in order to answer the challenge for  effective poverty alleviation, not only a lips service program and short notice on certain issue or trends. It is an effort that being done systematically and comprehensive by parties who feel that poverty and marginalization are crimes against human dignity.