Community development

Decent Work, not Hard Work

Semau Island is one of the areas in Kupang district, East Nusa Tenggara, known for its chronic food insecurity based on the government’s food security and vulnerability assessment released in 2010. To assist the island overcoming its food insecurity, the ILO through its Decent Work for Food Security Project facilitated a technical training on seaweed cultivation.

News | Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia | 21 November 2015
Semau Island is one of the areas in Kupang district, East Nusa Tenggara, known for its chronic food insecurity based on the government’s food security and vulnerability assessment released in 2010. To assist the island overcoming its food insecurity, the ILO through its Decent Work for Food Security Project facilitated a technical training on seaweed cultivation. The technical training was integrated with a series of trainings on promoting and developing entrepreneurship using the ILO’s training tools: GET Ahead, Community Based Enterprise Development/C-BED and Financial Literacy.

These training programmes helped farmers to manage their businesses properly and effectively. Inspired to do better, some trainees from Onansila village in South Semau decided to form a group called ‘Dari Dulu’, consisting of 23 farmers (12 men and 11 women).

“Working individually we could only cultivate 10 ropes of seaweeds, and at the maximum 25 ropes. Seaweed cultivation requires a long process from pre-planting materials, maintenance, to pre-post harvesting and transportation. All these processes are very labour intensive if we have to do it ourselves. And not to mention the risk of theft as a consequence of lack of monitoring” said Halens, the chief of the Dari Dulu group.

Working in a group was something new for these seaweed farmers. Yet, they were interested in trying. Around 32 ropes of seaweeds were cultivated in the first group trial. In the process, group members realized that they worked faster in a group. On average, working in a group was up to 200 per cent faster than when performing tasks individually.

They also learnt how to do their tasks more effectively. Before, farmers placed their ropes at any places they could find. However, under a group, they selected a common place for easy monitoring. Before, it took the farmers more than two weeks to dry their harvest as they just placed their seaweeds on the sand. Today, it takes only one week as the farmers use a hanging drying structure that ensures cleanliness and moist content, as well as minimizes product loss due to over drying.

When it comes to business management, the group is now able to develop a business plan. Having developed skills in book keeping, cost calculation and yield projection, the group decided to expand the business by cultivating 75 ropes for the second production. The cost of production was also used as one of the elements in bargaining the price with traders in the village. Moreover, the group has now been experimenting with a collective marketing system to access more market options or alternative traders in order to seek a better price.

While working in the group, the farmers are still managing their own seaweed farming as their main source of income. They apply the same system that they use in the group. The results they have obtained from grouping together have been contributing to their strength in managing their individual businesses.

Some of the members, for example, now plan to save their money for expanding their business by adding more ropes or buying a small boat, rehabilitating houses and covering their social needs like weddings and funerals, instead of spending it unproductively as they used to do.

Through this process, Halens is proudly saying,”Decent work, not hard work. That’s what we now know, and working in a group makes it practical.” The ILO has able to support a total of 110 seaweed farmers in South Semau in improving their current seaweed business.