Village Facilitator, Actor for Change in BUMDes

The presence of Village Owned Enterprises (BUMDes) is a new approach to improve the village economy based on the needs and potential of the village. Wahana Visi Indonesia (WVI) feels the need to support community empowerment in managing BUMDes by creating village facilitators as drivers of BUMDes change.

Through training with partners (YAO), WVI through the Envision project funded by the European Union has trained dozens of village facilitators from several villages in Kupang Regency. This training was carried out using the Gender Equality Social Inclusive (GESI) and Citizen Voice and Action (CVA) approach methods to provide strengthening and understanding as well as policies related to villages, village economic development, BUMDes, planning and monitoring processes for village development, as well as to teach related village facilitators to conduct education to the community.

Yane Iriance (33), a village facilitator who was selected to participate in the training, said that he gained new knowledge regarding how to provide knowledge and critical awareness of the community so that the community can tackle poverty in an organized manner and improve services and influence policies.

“We village facilitators are also facilitated to be able to convey every concept that is planned in the future action plan through small group practice,” said Yane.

Yane also learned that BUMDes is not easily formed, there must be certain standards and references. This became new knowledge for the selected village facilitators.

The facilitators are also taught to assist the development of BUMDes in the economic development of the community. Various materials related to building gender equality and social inclusion, as well as how to overcome gender inequality were also the focus of WVI's training for facilitators.

"All the knowledge and experience gained will be a strength for us, village facilitators, in assisting and supervising the development of BUMDes in the future for the sake of inclusive community economic development," Yane concluded.

Written by: Paulus Rassa, Field Facilitator of the Envision Project Wahana Visi Indonesia 

This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of Wahana Visi Indonesia and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union