MISTINAH – 32 years, married and mother of 3 children. She lives in the village of Srimulyo, Dampit sub district, Malang Regency. Srimulyo is dry and categorized as poor village. Women in this village tend to stop their school in junior high school or even lower due to several reasons. Many of local women go abroad as domestic migrant workers. In many cases they are victims of trafficking in person. RUMPUN initiated to build a women group in this village in 2008 to organize them with livelihood economic activities. Saving and credit and produce food products were chosen for their activities. Besides, RUMPUN provides various capacity building for group management, motivations and other social solidarity issues.
Mistinah joined RUMPUN as a target beneficiary since 2008 as a member of women group with economic based activity. She manages a very micro scale of shop in her house. Her husband works as a collector of agricultural products such as coconut, cassava and others from surrounding farmers areas and reselling in the near market outside the village. Sometimes, Mistinah helps her husband in managing the products. Mistinah is a quiet person, not talk too much especially if used Indonesian language. She prefers to talk in local language, but very confident.
In 2010, she participated in the training of women leadership for local motivators. One of the outcomes was that local motivators have to widening the works at the villages to other women. It can be another group establishment or increase the members of the existing groups.
Mistinah decided to quit from its group and start to establish another group. In 2011 she initiated the group with around 15 members with saving and credit activities, produces coffee powder to sell in small sachets and cassava based crackers. Saving and loan starts from very small amount of money: IDR 2000 per two weeks per person. Since RUMPUN persuaded members to increase the amount of saving with a program called a thousand a day, the group was able to increase the amount of saving quite significantly. It means that in every transaction day at least 14,000 IDR can be collected from one member. It can provide more loan for members that more valuable for their small business.
Mistinah keeps managing the system with opened management to build trust to members. Since a year ago, the group has more than 100 members, and managed more than 150 million IDR a year. Beside saving and loan, under Mistinah leadership, it provides food products for family needs, such as rice, sugar, eggs, cooking oil. In a year the group provides the needs of food products with the value of equivalent of IDR 50 millions. Members get the foods during the Ramadan every year in which community has great celebration of Ied days (Ramadan euphoria). By the time, understanding that the group has good activities and outcomes, there are some men joined the group.
The group has great contribution to the members’ livelihood and income. Members have a good understanding of saving as one of vital factor for money management. The group under the leadership of Mistinah is able to contribute to local economic development, in which even the local formal leadership have never think of. She is a good example of women contribution without very much talks. She leads by example not just for member, but also for wider community.
RUMPUN views that Mistinah is getting more confident to manage group, not just the saving and credit programs, but also the aspiration of members. She manages people. It is expected that she has good appreciation from local formal leaders (government) for her great contribution for local economic development, and get more access for other community dialog for wider local development, be part of decision making process, and make significant change for local community. It is expected that local government committed to use similar model of local economic development in the areas.