Ismawan Bambang
Organization: Bina Swadaya
Year Founded: 1967
Country: Indonesia
Website: www.binaswadaya.org
Geographic Area of Impact: .
Model: Hybrid Non-Profit
Focus: Agriculture,Microfinance,Rural Development.
Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Indonesia, 2006 The Innovation Bina Swadaya has been focused on socio-economic development of Indonesia’s rural communities for the past 40 years. Bambang Ismawan, Chairman of Bina Swadaya, embraces a strong philosophy of directly empowering these communities through education and training. Bina Swadaya’s origin arose from the Pancasila social movement in the 1950s, with specifically the activities around the Pancasila Farmer Association driving the creation of Bina Swadaya. To address strong demand for agricultural education and knowledge dissemination, Bina Swadaya went into the publishing business and started the “Trubus” agricultural magazine that is currently a market leader on the subject. Building on the success of that publication, Bina Swadaya then leveraged its printing infrastructure to enter other diverse publication segments like gardening, health issues, language training and small business skills. To date, it has published around 1600 agricultural book titles, and 826 titles in other areas. Besides generating profits from the sale of its own publications, Bina Swadaya has developed significant expertise in the printing field to become a printing powerhouse while at the same time offering market-leading consulting services. Aside from the success in the publishing business, Bina Swadaya started a franchise operation for agricultural shops in 2001 which provides market access for Bina Swadaya group’s products and since 1987, has been operating a flourishing eco-tourism business that focuses on local, as well as international, cultures and destinations. Meanwhile, it does microfinancing through 4 rural banks and cooperatives. Background Indonesia is a nation comprised of about 18,100 islands in the Southeast Asia archipelago, and has a population of close to 245 million people. With the bulk of Indonesia’s economic activity concentrated in its capital, Jakarta, many rural communities in regions like Sulawesi and Kalimantan find themselves struggling to keep up economically as the country as a whole progresses. Roughly 44% of Indonesia’s labor force is still engaged in agricultural activity, and introducing more effective agricultural production practices is one way to immediately impact the income and livelihoods of these rural communities. Through greater awareness and better education programs, the case can also be made for better environmental protection in these agrarian societies. Over the past 50 years, as Indonesia moved through various social movements, the need for a multi-prong solution to foster socio-economic development became apparent; this started with the Pancasila Social Movement in the 1950s and formed the basis for much of Bina Swadaya’s operations. Despite having its roots as an agricultural society, the absence of good publications in the field and structured education programs at the beginning of the social movement made it a challenge to reach out and broadly engage the rural communities to attain the prescribed goals of the movement. Strategy Bina Swadaya literally translates into the “Self-Reliance Development Foundation”. To reach its vision and to carry out its missions Bina Swadaya diverts its activities into seven categories as follows: 1. Community Empowerment; 2. Micro Finance Development; 3. Agribusiness Development; 4. Development Communication; 5. Alternative Tourism Development; 6. Printing Service; 7. Provide facilities for meeting, training, workshop and seminar. Bina Swadaya organizes its members into self-help groups, which then congregate in training centers for education and training in agribusiness as well as civil society empowerment. To date, there are 10,000 alumni members from these training centers. The self-help groups also form the locus for Bina Swadaya’s microfinance activities, which since 2003 have been modeled after the ASA (Association for Social Advancement) microfinance model. Bina Swadaya’s business operations are each profitable on their own, and overall, 30% of the profits generated from these operations get funneled back into the Civil Society Empowerment operation which funds the expansion of Bina Swadaya’s work throughout Indonesia. The Entrepreneur Bambang Ismawan has always been a contrarian in making life choices. When it came to careers, he chose agriculture when his peers mostly joined in industry. While pursuing his economics degree at Gadjah Mada University, he found that he was interested in neither business nor politics, and wanted to identify something more meaningful that he could pursue. His inspiration on social economic empowerment came from Father John Dijkstra SJ, a catholic priest originated from the Netherlands. Father Dijkstra also shaped Bambang’s view of socio-economic development of the rural poor by thinking of them as the “have little” as opposed to the “have not” – as such, they should be offered a helping hand, as opposed to a hand-out. Bambang has been involved in Bina Swadaya’s formation and growth for the past 40 years; and along the way has developed a proven track record of successful partnerships with government, NGOs and businesses. His philosophy of promoting self-reliance within Bina Swadaya’s self-help groups drives the strategic development of operating engines within the organization, ranging from micro-finance to a strong ethic of learning. He invests a large amount of his time on developing the leadership capabilities of the organization, and the fact that several employees have grown with Bina Swadaya for more than 30 years is a strong testimony to Bambang’s ability to empower and cultivate leaders within the organization.
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