By: Dr. Anggun Trisnanto Hari Susilo, Dept. of International Relations, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Brawijaya, Indonesia.
Email: a.trisnanto@ub.ac.id
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an alternative funding resource for community-based development (CBD). The side effects of a company’s operations, most notably those impacting the natural or social environment become a ‘justification’ and motivation for CSR. Despite its potential, CBD supported by CSR also faces challenges. These range from day-to-day CBD business as usual such as social mapping, planning, program implementation, and monitoring to more complex issues like infiltrated interests (see Nielsen & Thomsen, 2007). This post relates to a CSR project by one of the biggest gas companies in East Java. A university team was chosen as the implementation agency.
The mandate given to the university for CBD was twofold: technical assistance for early childhood learning and income generation for women’s groups.
Designing a curriculum as part of the first mandate has been the most challenging, especially at the implementation level.
In the early childhood learning project, mothers are inside the classroom while feeding their children breakfast. They have conversations that disturb the teaching process. This routine activity is difficult to change. One mother stated that they did it because children like having breakfast in class while learning with peers. Another said that conversation in the classroom is better than outside because the class has fans. In other words, the classroom is a comfortable place for mothers, However, this negatively impacts the learning process and intimidates teachers.
This intimidation occurs when mothers try to influence or determine the learning process. Mothers can lecture teachers on things that they feel are appropriate for their children. As a result, teaching outputs are not achieved. This is worsened by the decreasing number of teachers continuing in the profession in the last five years leading to a severe problem with education quality. This is a challenge not only in Indonesia but also in places like the US (Murnane & Steele, 2007).
Thus, we can see how development programs with clear pedagogies, linked to activities and in-class rules can be ineffective. This relates to Hayden and Wai’s (2013 p. 276) observation around the gap between ideal thoughts brought by planners and actual realities.
One income-generating projects, the focus was combining income-generating activities with promoting the use of nutritious food.[1] Having observed children’s breakfasts as full of carbohydrates and inadequate protein and fibre, the university team decided to work with mothers on cooking nutritious and easy meals for their children. At the same time, they can potentially sell this food for additional income. A professional chef was invited to share how to prepare food for children and both women and men participated. Nearly a hundred people came, which surpassed the team’s expectations.
The chef was asked to promote local nutritious ingredients for food like fish and vegetables. This is important due to the incidence of stunting in the area – the average level across the country is still just over 21 per cent. In many coastal communities in Indonesia, nutritious and high-protein foods are sold in the market and not used for domestic consumption. This is ironic since stunting is high. This issue interacts with others such as childcare, access to food resources, sanitation practices, and social norms to contribute to stunting rates (Nafikadini et al., 2024). Still, it is clear that there was strong community enthusiasm for income-generating projects.
Our lessons learned have pedagogical implications. First, project design requires creativity especially when it impacts groups with diverse social and cultural backgrounds. Design should be flexible though still hold to CBD principles. Local context matters in this stage. Second, there are areas of intervention that are preferred by local communities. In a place where most people are poor, income-generating projects are seen as preferable to education and institutional reform but combining them may offer a path forward. To sum up, doing CBD creatively has the potential to improve community well-being in the coastal areas we worked in.
List of references
Hayden, J., & Wai, S. (2013). Community-Based Approaches to Early Childhood Development: A Matter of Degree. In P. R. Britto, P. L. Engle, & C. M. Super (Eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Development Research and Its Impact on Global Policy. Oxford University Press.
Murnane, R. J., & Steele, J. L. (2007). What Is the Problem? The Challenge of Providing Effective Teachers for All Children. The Future of Children, 17(1).
Nafikadini, I., Yusi, L., & Nurika, G. (2024). Socio-Cultural Study of Nutrition in Families of Stunted Toddlers in Coastal Communities in Jember Regency. Jurnal Promkes: The Indonesian Journal of Health Promotion and Health Education, 12(2).
Nielsen, A. E., & Thomsen, C. (2007). Reporting CSR – what and how to say it? Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 12(1).
[1] There is a good example on this from India. See Pavithra, G., Ganesh, K. S., & Gautam, R. (2019). “Effectiveness of a Community-based Intervention on Nutrition Education of Mothers of Malnourished Children in a Rural Coastal Area of South India”. Indian Journal of Public Health, 63(1).