In response to our changing climate, you help communities implement disaster risk reduction plans and apply climate change adaptation initiatives. You support communities to improve their livelihoods through adaptive farming practices, micro-credit groups to establish small businesses, and better access to water and sanitation. You also help people to claim their rights, especially those with disabilities. One project in Indonesia is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).

What
Resilient and Inclusive Community Development (RICD)

Where
North and West Sumatra and Riau Islands Province

Who
9,565 (5,353 female, 4,212 male, including 967 persons with disability) in partnership with ELCA

Partners
Centre for Disaster Risk Management and Community Development Studies (CDRM&CDS)
Micro-loan, macro-change!
For this small business on Mentawai Island, chips are changing lives!

Potato chips can be dangerous.
You open a pack with the best of intentions to just have a couple …
… and the next moment the pack is empty, upside-down above your mouth, and you’re violently shaking out the last few crumbs stuck to the bottom.
If that’s ever happened to you, you might be interested to know about the Chip Business you support on Mentawai Island in Indonesia, through ALWS.
Not potato chips though. Sweet potato chips. Taro chips. Banana chips.
You give this ALWS help through our partner CRDM&CDS – part of the Nommensen Lutheran University – to families in the poorest communities.
We’ll let one of the business owners, Dewi Sartika Saleleubaja, explain how your support is helping families transform their lives.
“In the past, we sold our products without packaging. We just put the chips in the plastic without any label, so nobody knows who made the chips. The packaging was not attractive, and we sold just a little.
Now we are having new products.
We put the chips with new packaging and labels so our products look more interesting and eye-catching.
People soon know who made the chips, as well as who supported the production, because we also put the CDRM&CDS and donor’s logos in the label.
Our sales have increased and it will be going up and up in the future.”
You can see the ALWS logo on the chips packet, along with the Australian Government logo, who ‘chip in’ to match your ALWS work in Indonesia.
How your ‘chipping in’ help works
- The front-line team you support identifies the most marginalized families.
- These families join a micro-credit group.
- The group develops a business idea – like selling chips.
- You support them to improve the quality and marketing of their product.
- Profits pay back any loans from the micro-credit group.
- Extra profits improve the lives of families!
What’s exciting is seeing people’s confidence grow … and with it the businesses, and the benefits to families!
ALWS acknowledges the support of the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).
Find out more about...
- 101 vulnerable families with increased capacity to engage in village development and advocacy
- 317 vulnerable families establish home gardens to improve food security and reduce malnutrition
- 292 families trained in finance and saving
- 48 farmers trained to scale up banana production
- 6 demonstration plots operated by 146 farmers practicing climate change adaptation
- 785 people in 21 schools educated on disaster risk reduction and climate change
- 13 community health posts strengthened
- 24 villages with raised awareness of rights of people with disabilities and disability inclusion
- 627 women sensitised on women’s rights.
Reducing barriers and providing equal opportunities can support vulnerable groups to fully participate in the development process. Gender and disability justice must be promoted at both family and community levels.
Women and persons with disabilities, through active membership of community-based groups, have been engaged in livelihoods, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and other development processes, including voicing their rights and their interests to local authorities.
“Before your support, we struggled to feed the family. If we wanted to have food and vegetables we would have to buy from the market, but we didn’t have enough money. We ate just rice.
I felt my heart was crying because all I could feed the family was rice with salt and water.
I was often thinking ‘how can I feed the family? We needed to work for other families like slaves on their rubber trees just to survive.
The first support we got was with chickens and piglets. From selling the eggs and the piglets that we bred, we could buy clothes and vegetables for the children.
I joined the Farmer’s Group set up by CDRM&CDS(your ALWS partner in Indonesia) to learn about growing my own kitchen garden. I learnt how to prepare the land by digging and making the compost. I would collect soil from the land and leaves and other plants to make a mulch. Mix it with rice husks and banana leaves too.
They taught me how to make organic fertilizer by using the water from when I wash the rice each day and to mix it with bamboo root and some other local plants. They also showed me how to make raised seed beds and even how to collect the good seeds from what I grow so I can plant and not have to buy from other places.
I grow chillies, beans, mustard leaves, corn, eggplant, tomatoes and kangkun – my favourite! The children get nutrition from the vegetables. Now I don’t need to go and buy, especially when we have not much money.
I can have money for sending the children to school, especially Omera in the senior school.”
“When Omera was born, the midwife did not bring my baby to me.
They kept her for two days because she was not normal like other babies. Her hands were not normal. But when I saw Omera, I was not sad. I saw her beautiful face, and this changed my heart. I loved her.
When Omera came home from the hospital, many people from the village came to see. They told me many hard things like, “how can you take care of this baby? Look at her hands and feet! What can this baby do when she grows up? You will have trouble in the future.”
Sometimes I would think about those words, and I would cry. But I was not influenced by these words. When I felt sad, I would tell myself that Omera is a gift from God and that each gift He gives can be different.
I thank the people of Australia for helping my family to make the garden, and especially for Omera so she can keep her spirit in education and keep learning and feel confident in herself.”
Gifts of Grace
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