Monday, October 16, 2006

makes poverty history

Whenever I read word of ‘poverty’, I always thinking about my country especially people who lives in the outer island of Java. When I knew about this event: International Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty on Oct.17, I also start to think and imagine what kind of ‘real action’ to eradicate poverty. There were so many programs and policies designed and implemented, but only few of them has been socialized and evaluated in serious way. In Indonesia, poor people are – definitely – becomes subject of politics only. Nothing more.

In my opinion, let’s start thinking and planning poverty eradication program in local basis approach. We should never ever try to think about national – top down policies again. Instead, try to find any ‘hidden capital’ in local community to empower the economic activities and then try to find out what “poverty” actually mean for people. “Local wisdom” on poverty are actually exist quite long time ago in old ancient Indonesia. However, these kinds of local capital were being wiped out and replace by simple solution like money transfer or pure charity. That’s why now many people preferred just to receive without wondering how long they have to receive from others.