Our Updates 2021 - Powering Artisans

The Covid-19 public health crisis has resulted in an economic crisis and posed a myriad of challenges for micro, small and medium businesses in communities across the world, including Indonesia. The impacts are even worse on Indigenous people.

Indigenous communities already experience poor access to healthcare, lack of access to essential services, sanitation, and other key preventive measures, such as clean water, hygiene, disinfectant, etc. Likewise, most nearby local medical facilities, if and when there are any, are often under-equipped and under-staffed.

As an Indigenous-based social enterprise, Handep faced great challenges in keeping the business afloat. Lockdowns occurred so frequently in Indonesia, and the end of the Covid-19 pandemic kept hanging in the balance. This condition has limited our distribution channels and various business operations and marketing activities.

As a business leader, I could see Covid-19 has aggravated the issue of food insecurity, resulting from the loss of their traditional lands and territories of the Indigenous Dayak community.

Yet, this momentum reinforced the resilience of Indigenous people especially indigenous women, who are often the main providers of food and nutrition to their families. In our villages, the main livelihood of these women is weaving. We had to do every way and leverage every single opportunity to survive our business which hundreds of Indigenous women are dependent upon. Our worst nightmare was to see the business collapsing, which thanks to you all it did not happen. It was a scary but enlightening journey for us as an impact business.

This, once again, shows us the critical roles of women and weaving in sustaining a generation. These all are only possible because of all of us who unite in the spirit of togetherness.

Read more about our journey here.