Community Empowerment Facility Profile

BACKGROUND

For more than 40 years, competing pressures for natural resources and the lack of a coherent legal framework have limited the access to land by rural households, generating numerous land and agrarian conflicts in the process.  These problems are the focus of an initiative by the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria or KPA), a national network of NGOs and farmers' organizations, and the Pasundan Peasant Union (Serikat Petani Pasundan or SPP), a local farmers' union in West Java.  This project was initiated in 2003 and seeks to increase farmer-leaders' competencies for organizing and advocacy, in order to secure access to land for their communities, as well as to ensure that farmers have the skills and resources needed to use land productively.  

Founded in 1994, KPA conducts organizing, policy analysis and advocacy work designed to: (i) encourage dialogue on agrarian policy issues, and influence the actions of decision makers and other people with power by providing analytical and practical approaches to addressing the people's land problem; (ii) fill an institutional gap, as people that have vital problem with land are often not well organized, nor capable of effectively articulating their interests and aspirations; (iii) overcome a spatial gap as well as language barrier, which usually separates the people from locations and institutions of decision-making; and (iv) improve the self respect of people, improve their self-confidence, constitute integrity and promote mutual trust.

Based in Garut, West Java , SPP conducts capacity-building activities for farmers and farmer associations, so they can better manage agrarian issues.  This includes assistance for negotiations; training programs on leadership, civil rights, legal education; and spiritual education for participants in the agrarian movement.  SPP also engages in physical village reconstruction, environmental restoration (including forests and rivers), advocacy of the recognition of people's rights, and support to alternative middle schools for children from farming families.  SPP's membership includes farmers from Garut, Ciamis and Tasikmalaya districts in West Java.

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WHO WILL BENEFIT?

The beneficiary communities are the victims of land expropriation. In the areas of the project, the communities are often displaced by large plantation companies and forest concession companies.  Both of these types of companies access lands through state-granted concessions, in the framework of exploitation from the plantation and forests sectors in Indonesia.  These communities have the individual type of land ownership. However, their individual land ownership in many areas does not reflect their security of land tenure: existing Indonesian laws concerning land ownership only guarantee the formal type of individual ownership in the form of land certificates.  The majority of these communities, however, do not possess land certificates. In other words, they can not prove their individual ownership according to the existing regulations.  Ironically, in some areas where the communities have the land certificates, in the name of plantation and forest interests, these formal and legitimate ownership rights were released by the state (the National Land Agency), creating a categorized of false ownership by private interests.

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GOAL AND OBJECTIVES

The overall objectives of this project are to strengthen the competencies of peasant leaders to take an active and constructive role in organizing and advocacy.

The detailed objectives of the project are the following:

1. To assess organizational dynamic of peasant organizations arising from land dispute cases and educational needs of peasant leaders.
2. To produce course manuals that help course managers and educators to conduct advocacy courses for peasant leaders.
3. To initiate a peasant-based education, information and resource unit that manages information through education and media.
4. To establish conceptual consistency and practicalities of agrarian reform among 120 local peasant leaders (both men and women), and to lay ground for the more effective role of the peasant organization in organizing and advocacy for land reform.

There are four main activities :
(i) Assessment on local peasant organization dynamics;
(ii) Developing course manual; (iii) Education and Information Resource Unit; and
(iv) Course Circles.

Assessment on local peasant organization dynamics

Assessment on around 10 (ten) local peasant organizations struggle deal with conflicted claims over land that will produce information on
(i) portraits of the organizational dynamics of local peasant organizations; and
(ii) list of educational need of peasants leader. This information will be useful to determine realistic objectives and curriculum design of course conducted.

Steps to conduct this assessment:

(a) Developing consultation with SPP's Leaders
(b) Produce methodological design of assessment
(c) Conduct field visit, observation, interviews and focused group discussion
(d) Developing analysis and producing draft report
(e) Consulting draft report produced
(f)  Finalizing report; and,
(g) Producing thick-and-full-colour report for public

Developing Course Manual 

List of educational needs produced from Assessment will be transformed into course objectives. In their turn, with methodological competencies based on participatory-learning approach, we will develop a course manual. The course manual will help trainer to prepare step by step for delivering services for the learner.  In this course manual, we will find information on basic assumption of the course; methodological guides; step-by-step procedure to facilitate learner; and learning materials needed by participant to learn.

Steps to produce this course manual:

(a)   Developing Framework
(b)   Small-workshop to developing Curriculum
(c)   Writing the manual
(d)   Try Out the manual
(e)   Small-workshop to finalize manual

The expertise available for developing the course manual consists of expertise on land and natural resource policies, laws and regulations, critical education, organizing and advocacy methods, history of peasant and agrarian reform movements, training and courses, public campaign, and capacity building.

Education Information-Resource Unit

We want to support Peasant Union with developing education information-resource unit playing roles to assemble, store, process, package and deliver information through educational medias. In the context of organizing and advocacy, there are six kinds of information needed by peasant leaders: peasant conditions, external dynamics influencing peasant life, technical-methodological know-how to improving peasant life, organizational processes related information, educational activities related information, and information directed to influence external actors. This unit will be composed from concerned educated activists that using participatory approach and techniques for producing those information. This information can be packaged in several kind of medias: printed medias like papers, books, pamphlets, posters, etc.; audio-visual media, like films, or compugrafics. This information can also be delivered through organizational meeting, course-workshop or seminars, letters, press media, or other community medias.

Steps to produce Information are:

(a)   There is specific and written mandate ordered by the Peasant Union Top-Leader
(b)   Set-up task force and logistics to produce the information needed
(c)   Production processes and packaging into educational medias
(d)   Developing consultation with the users of this information
(e)   Finalizing products and delivering services

Course Circles

The implementer of the course will be established as Facilitators Team composed from peasant union top leaders and some concerned educated activists. The team will develop the recruitment framework and tools, determine facilitator that capable to implement sessions guided in the course manual, preparing organizing committee for that course and monitor-evaluate course results. We will develop 4 (four) courses, every course will have 30 learners. Every course composed from three kinds of activities in the courses: class sessions (3 x 7 days), field activities (3 x 50 days), and evaluation-workshop (1 x 2 days).  All of activities will be dedicated t o establish conceptual consistency and practicalities of land reform among 120 (one hundred and twenty) local peasant leaders, and to lay ground for the more effective role of the peasant organization in organizing and advocacy.

            Steps to implement courses are:

a.      Set up facilitator team
b.      Developing recruitment framework and tools
c.      Preparing organizing committee and technical preparation
d.      Arrange class-sessions
e.      Monitoring field activities
f.        Developing draft reports
g.      Arrange evaluation-workshop
h.      Finalizing report

EXPECTED RESULTS AND INDICATORS

The expected results of this project are:

• the assessment report on peasant dynamics,
• the course manual for the peasant groups,
• educational medias in forms of popular books and films on peasant struggle dynamics, and
• 120 trained local peasant leaders (women and men) as the backbone of the local and regional peasant movements leadership.

THE INDICATORS OF SUSTAINABILITY

The participative approach involving all key actors (peasants, civil society, academics and government institutions) should create a strong social base which will allow successful implementation and sustainable benefits. The actions of this project are based on the involvement of already existing organizations with a strong social base and considerable momentum for action. By enabling these organizations to articulate the interests of landless and small farmers-thereby widening their social support base-the project will contribute considerably to the existing momentum for sustainable rural development in Indonesia. Furthermore, by building the capacity of peasant-based organizations, the project will increase their ability to act independently with minimum external support.

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CONCLUSION

KPA will elaborate and disseminate the lessons learned of this project to another groups within the national network of KPA, which includes nearly 200 NGOs and peoples organizations. This dissemination of knowledge and experience will create a possibility of replication among the prepared peasant members of KPA network. Eventually, among the groups concerned and involved, shall develop a network of knowledge on agrarian courses and peasant leaders that have expertise on advocacy and organizing.

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