Empowering women, Buy Their Products

By Tabrani Yunis
I have been working and involving in some programs of women empowerment in Aceh since I established my NGO, Center for Community Development and Education (CCDE) in November 30, 1993. I also started to learn about how to empower and to strenghthen the grassroots women since 1989 by joining the internship at an NGO in Solo, Central Java for at least one month. I also took trainings on this issue.

I chose this issue because of some backgrounds.
First, in my social life, in my sorrounding and even in my family I factually women lived in poverty. They were not only poor of financial and materials, but also poor of knowledge, skills, motivation of change. The second facts was that women still had less access to education that made them poor of knowledge, skills and spirit to change their standard of life. The third, women had less access to public services etc. These all conditions have brought women to be powerless. We could say that women had been discriminated for a long time or even for decades. Shortly women has been powerless since they have been discriminated in all sectors of life.
Fourth, I witnessed my family and relatives, they were living in bad conditions. Therefore, I needed do something as far as I could.

Based on those conditions, since I had had knowledge, willingness, skills and commitment, so I put my choice and priority at CCDE to empower and to strengthen grassroots women in Aceh.

Through establishment of CCDE I could start my work and made my dream happened. In order to make the poor and grassroots women be empowered, CCDE designed its program which included three services, alternative education, economic development and publication.

We started our work by indentifying women's problems, potencies or strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threads etc. after understanding their problems, we started our activity by asking or inviting them to be involved in discussion that we made once a month. Here, we encouraged women to be more productive etc.

In the monthly discussion series women can express their mind and even household problems, etc. This discussion series have made wome could express their minds fluently.

The educational activities is the umbrella of the programs at CCDE. It means that the Educatinal programs held for preparing women to be able to build their life in their community. What about economic development program?

Yes, it is also a part of educational programs which made women be interested to be part of the women's group formed by CCDE. We said that economic development program was as the entry point, the entry for envolving more grassroots women to join CCDE's program.

Started the program after holding the monthly discussions series, women then got our other educational services namely training series. CCDE then held some trainings needed bu women. There were various trainings were done, such as training on entrepreneurship management which covered the management of entrepreneurship, the management of products, fimancial management, marketing management and even new creation on the products.

Since the problem of women in the grassroots level was caused by the discriminated problems, CCDE then provided training on women leadership, gender, peace building, and even training on writing.

Especially for writing training, CCDE has been training more than 1000 women, youths and even children in Aceh. They then became as the contributors of POTRET and Anak Cerdas magazines which are published by CCDE.

Back to economics development program. When we come to the people, when we asked them what their problems in running their small enterprises, the answers we got ware basically need for them. Women need more working capital to start their work. This was the common problem or reason of the women in running business. Therefore, since then CCDE provided its micro credit service to women have working capital. CCDE provided micro credit for women and youths.

But in its journey, women who got the microcredit were not able to build their business properly, because they did not have enough knowledge and skill on it. So that CCDE made meeting the process be simple. They could access the microcredit easily. Some of them started to produce some products which they sold for their neighborhood or in the market, bug still limited.

When their peoducts were not sold, most women got disappointed and spiritless. The problem was their products were not absorbed in the market. This situation became the obstacles for women to continue their small business and products.

Now, CCDE through POTRET Gallery which is located on Jalan Prof. Ali Hasyimi, Pango Raya, Banda Aceh, is trying to promote and sell their products at POTRET Gallery and even online.
Here, by helping promoting and sell their products, we can make their production process can run in a sustainable cycle. It will be very useful, if we buy their products means that we are empowering and strengthening women. So, lets buy their products now