First Lady Ani Yudhoyono and Cabinet ministers’ wives launched on Wednesday a program called Prosperous Village, which is aimed at empowering villagers with the help of university students.
The pilot project launched in Hargotirto village, Kulonprogo regency, is a joint undertaking between the Solidarity of Unity Cabinet Ministers’ Wives (SIKIB) and Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University (UGM).
“We hope the scheme can serve as an example for other villages in Indonesia,” UGM rector Sujarwadi said in a speech.
The project is a collboration between five major programs of SIKIB and the student-run UGM rural field work program.
Ani said the SIKIB had been developing five major programs aimed at improving health, creativity, education and social and environmental awareness among the less-privileged.
“The five programs are expected to help Indonesia meet its MDGs [Millienium Development Goals] targets. We try to do simple but concrete jobs,” she said, citing as example the SIKIB’s dispatching of a number of “smart cars” (mobile libraries) to several regions and the establishment of “smart houses” (small libraries) in others.
She said university students taking part in the implementation of the Prosperous Village scheme would also benefit from it because it would give them the opportunity to put what they learned at school into practice.
“And with their villages being developed, we hope the youths will stay there and support the development instead of leaving the villages to seek jobs in big cities,” Ani said.
Hargotirto, which is home to more 1,900 families, is located in rural Yogyakarta, about an hour drive from the provincial capital. Most of its population work as farmers arning on average US$2 a day.
The scheme has built the community center a “smart house”, which combines the functions of a library and an Internet cafe, and a small traffic education center where children can learn about road signs and rules.
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