Empowerment | Collaborate with women’s prisons!

Jun 7, 2020

Hello Friends, dear friends, Ma’am, sir and dear family,

Yayasan Kawan Baik Indonesia, Fair Future Indonesia and Rumah Sanur Creative collaborated during this Pandemic in “COVID-19 Community Care”, since the beginning of March 2020 to provide healthy food, vitamins, masks and hand sanitiser for people in Bali.

On April 3, Indonesia released two regulations, government regulations and regulations of the Ministry of Health, to pave the way for restrictions on public activities (PKM), which is equivalent to the locking of parts of the island. This special order requires offices, schools, markets, places of worship, and public spaces to be closed. Therefore, we found it was raised to provide voluntary goods and programs to help us make “goodie bags”, masks and hand sanitizer.

Ahead of the normal transition period, we realized that people still need a healthy supply of food, soap, hand sanitizer, and vitamins.

In early June, new rules allowed businesses, including stalls, restaurants, shopping malls, traditional markets and grocery stores, to continue operating.
Meanwhile, other socioeconomic activities operate almost as normal.

What enables this economic recovery is that people have to wear masks when out on the road or work. This while keeping a safe distance between them.

As a foundation, we take part to provide information, help and lead the community to generally continue to carry out activities in this new situation. We engage vulnerable populations to participate in our duties in this period. Especially among women, personal initiatives are as valuable as general initiatives, in response to female-specific vulnerabilities.

During the COVID-19 outbreak inmates were not allowed to visit, practically for three months locked up for them. Other partners supporting the CCC project, Fireflies Jewellery and ToKo Concept Store join us to engage the women in prison.

By producing 600 masks for our next CCC project, we are offering the prison community the opportunity to become an active player in the fight against pandemics. It also satisfies them and is a good thing they can do in prison. We brought them all the materials used to make these 600 masks. We help them in how to produce masks comfortably and neatly so as to give them the opportunity to work, work and income.

Female inmates are also becoming new companions in producing protective equipment such as masks to meet the needs of future Covid-19 Community Care (Kawan Baik Berbagi).

We met Mrs. Lili, the governor of Kerobokan prison. He and his staff welcomed us very well. Ibu Lili said that her responsibilities are much greater than when working in the Directorate General of Correctional in Jakarta:

Mrs Lili said: “Of course, it’s hard here! My experience at head office is my resource. So, since I’ve been here, I’ve done everything to find new collaborators and many, to engage them to do activities with all of us in this prison. “It also changes the way the public views and perceptions of negative bias. We must always find new activities and values! Positive things. We have to find something to highlight his personal abilities when he goes to prison. To offer them the capacity to evolve according to their own experience. This is to give them a background in terms of confidence, skills and knowledge gained during their stay in prison. Most of the women here are convicted of drug-related offenses. As a result, one must find one or more adequate ways to offer them tools that aim to develop new tools for their future lives; this is of course to open the door to a new world for them! “.

Prison provides rehabilitation programs for inmates as follows:

Cooking classes,
Craft courses,
Sewing courses,
Salon & Spa Education, and massage courses,
Planting programs,
Hospitality management courses,

For all of us at the Foundation, this was our first time visiting the prison, which is also an active and overcrowded prison! It’s a long way from what we imagined. Nice sanitation, beautiful garden and paintings, adorable staff with amazing humility. Ms. Lili said that prison is beautiful like a woman. He also wanted to show another vision of the prison and its prisoners. Lili and all those encountered are thrilled to be part of the “COVID-19 combatants” with the ability to make masks.

During the project we will visit them several times, the purpose of the training itself is not only to foster the production of masks but also educate them how to improve the quality of standards to add value to the goods.

We need to collect and duplicate anything of value and invite people to convey and interpret information and share experiences. If this operation is successful, we think it can be beneficial. Just to show civil society the importance of accompanying its citizens, offering them a certificate