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Mercy Corps has improved the lives of more than 1,000,000 Indonesians across the country’s vast expanse of islands since 1998. In addition to our long-established programs focusing on urban issues and poverty reduction, we are helping communities prepare for and recover from natural disasters with a forward view on climate change adaptation. We provide both immediate aid and long-term programs to “build back better” by improving community infrastructure, resiliency, and economic opportunities in Indonesia’s most challenging urban and coastal areas.
Combating Urban Poverty
Urbanization is a growing concern in Indonesia with 118 million people (roughly 50% of the population) living in urban centers, 21 million of whom are slum dwellers living below the poverty line. These vulnerable citizens, many subsisting on less than $2 a day, live without access to basic services resulting in disease and malnutrition. These cities have yet to fully address the challenges of marginalization that define income poverty for millions of its residents. Mercy Corps is working on the complex underlying issues of the urban poor by designing and implementing programs that help increase incomes, improve access to clean water supplies and sanitation, and promote better health and nutrition practices.
Increasing and Improving Economic Opportunities
Mercy Corps seeks out creative, market-based solutions that provide economic benefits to individuals and communities, including the “informal sector” of the urban poor. By implementing programs focused on micro-enterprise solutions, value chain development and financial literacy, Mercy Corps helps create effective, functioning market systems to address income poverty.
Our urban programs include strengthening value chains in the tofu / tempe sector and creating a sustainable social enterprise of nutritious food carts potentially reaching 500,000 poor urban children. In a rural context, Mercy Corps is assisting coffee farmers in Northern Indonesia develop sound financial practices as well as directing community-lead, sustainable economic recovery in conflict-affected areas of the Maluku Islands.
Increasing Access to Financial Services
Indonesia has persistently high poverty despite being home to 50,000 microfinance institutions (MFIs). More than 32 million Indonesians currently live below the poverty line, with 40 million lacking access to financial services. The current microfinance industry provides only the most basic banking services.
Since 1999, Mercy Corps has been helping develop microfinance in Indonesia. In 2006, we established the Microfinance Innovations Center for Resources and Alternatives (MICRA) – a support body designed to provide technical assistance, training, ratings, appraisals and financial services to MFIs throughout the country.
Improving Health and Nutrition
Jakarta’s municipal sewerage system serves only 2% of the population, leaving most sewage untreated. Access to clean and safe water, sanitation and solid waste disposal is necessary to reduce the incidence of infectious disease, one of the main underlying causes of malnutrition and child mortality. Mercy Corps works with local government and private sector partners building improved private and communal sanitation facilities as well as hand washing stations, cultivating community awareness around sanitation, and forming strong economic relationships to facilitate access to affordable, adequate nutrition.
With our programs for mothers and children, we help the most vulnerable people become better nourished and more secure in their food supply. A declining preference for immediate and exclusive breastfeeding in exchange for infant formula is creating a health and economic crisis in Indonesia. Mercy Corps improves the health of mothers and children by teaching and promoting exclusive breastfeeding. One project aims to create a comprehensive ‘Mother’s Support Group’ model to improve the continuum of care for mothers, newborns and infants. We are strengthening the ability of local health workers to provide the best care possible, educating parents, and working with local organizations, businesses and government to advocate for improved health policies and increased regulations for companies who aggressively market infant formula to the poor.
Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation
Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world. It faces regular landslides, flooding, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes along with the tsunamis they can cause. The region is projected to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change - rising sea levels pose a substantial threat to a country largely inhabited along its coastlines. Increased flooding/drought and disease are expected to impact those left most vulnerable - urban slum dwellers. Their houses are more likely to crumble in an earthquake and wash away in a flood. They lack the safety net to survive, the services to recover, and the funds to rebuild.
Mercy Corps is helping to mitigate the impact of such disasters through an innovative program that brings together communities, government, and the private sector to identify and map areas at risk and to plan, train and practice how to respond when disasters occur. Our programs aim to catalyze attention, funding, and action around climate to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable urban communities.
Disaster Response
Beginning in December 2004 with the Aceh tsunami, Mercy Corps has responded to natural disasters throughout the islands including the May 2006 Java earthquake, the 2007 flooding in Jakarta, and most recently the substantial tsunami that struck the Mentawai Islands in October 2010. Our Indonesia Response Team (IRT), consisting of staff members based throughout Indonesia, is trained to deploy quickly and provide immediate relief to survivors during the critical first months after a disaster strikes. Mercy Corps also helps communities rebuild by restoring livelihoods and incorporating strategies for increased resiliency into future disaster management and planning.
For more information, visit the Mercy Corps Indonesia web site.
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