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Purbaratu Programme
act locally,
sell
globally!
Bold Ambition
The Purbaratu programme is an ambitious attempt
to support handicrafts from raw materials in the field, to the
showroom overseas.
Its a bit of a maze, but if you can follow it,
you can see how we are trying to support every step from
planting the raw material of mendong to selling finished
handicrafts overseas.
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TEPAT will rent land for landless farmers, making it
available in a sharecropping arrangement.
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Expertise in organic farming and organic fertilizers will be
provided to farmers with the aim of improving long-term soil
quality and quality of the harvested mendong.
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Additional training in cultivation of
mendong will increase
financial yield to farmers (compared to the traditional crop,
i.e.,
rice).
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A
savings scheme will be developed to encourage farmers to
save money. This could eventually free them from
sharecropping arrangements.
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TEPAT will
provide capital to a local wholesaler, but we are therefore able to guarantee a certain degree of price
stability, both in that offered to farmers and to artisans.
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Capital may also be available for other related industries.
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Amongst the businesses that will benefit will be:
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wholesalers of raw materials
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artisans already working independently
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artisans currently working as labourers for others will
be financed and trained to establish their own
businesses.
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Local wholesalers and salesmen will also be financed,
and this will have the knock on effect of further
developing the local (Indonesian) market for mendong
handicrafts.
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Handykrafts may also work with local sales
persons. This will
also allow these people to locate those who are sufficiently skilled,
allowing us to produce goods of sufficient quality for sale
overseas. This is vital if Handykrafts is to have the
production capacity to cope with the large orders which must
be sought if the goal of financing other development work is
to be realized (see step 12).
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Handykrafts will work with artisans to design products
suited for the overseas market. They will also continue to
work to improve consistency and quality and production
capacity.
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Handykrafts will aggressively market
mendong products overseas; we aim to establish agents in Australia, New
Zealand, the UK and the US.
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The
diagramme above shows the flow of funds passing back from: foreign
markets - Handykrafts - artisans -wholesalers - farmers
Thus overseas sales are a very real factor in the long term
sustainability of the project, and in fact act as the
‘engine’ which drives every step.
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Handykrafts, as a profit centre of SNT, is also a critical
source of funding towards all the development work that is
carried out by SNT. Revenue may eventually be used for other
development projects both in the village of Purbaratu and
elsewhere in the city of Tasikmalaya. Thus as the capacity
of Handykrafts is increased, major steps towards the
institutional sustainability of SNT will be made.
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