Empowering those who are considered helpless, becomes Novi’s life principle.Karya Perempuan, a collaboration between YCAB Foundation and Facebook SheMeansBussiness succeeded in providing training to 590 womenpreneurs to increase their business resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among them is Novi Kurnia, who sells through social media: Facebook and Instagram @abonkokipurbalingga.
Empowering those who are considered helpless, becomes Novi’s life principle. Through @abonkokipurbalingga, Novi decided to live life as an entrepreneur who also has an impact on society. “In our business, there are some employees with disabilities, schizophrenia, and the elderly who do not have children nor husbands. Many people think that our employees are less educated, their competence and physical condition are considered unproductive, and do not meet the company’s employment criteria. But it turned out that their assumption was wrong,” mentioned Novi. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Novi’s business experienced numerous obstacles. Such as reduced sales, lack of raw materials supply, so that the prices of some materials rose. In order for her business to survive and keep its employees, Novi actively sought help to develop her business. Novi then joined and took part in a series of training by Karya Perempuan. Armed with the knowledge he gained from Karya Perempuan, Novi not only succeeded in making @abonkokipurbalingga’s business survive but also thrive. Novi was able to hire more disabled, schizophrenic, and elderly employees who found it difficult to secure employment during the pandemic.
A similar success story is also shared by Rarastiti, owner of the @farizoshop on Instagram, which sells clothing and household furniture. “I got a lot of knowledge from this training, I used to upload plain photos, now I write (captions) on the picture to lure buyers to buy the goods, how to take good product photos, how to sell on social media,” said Rarastiti.
Novi and Rarastiti represent women MSME entrepreneurs who have received the Karya Perempuan training which was launched last August 2020 by YCAB Foundation and Facebook SheMeansBussiness. Whilst running for 4 months, this training succeeded in helping 590 womenpreneurs of MSMEs in 50 cities in 15 provinces in Indonesia. The participants received digital marketing training (Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp Business). In addition to that, financial literacy materials were also provided so that womenpreneurs can manage their finances better, make decisions, and identify opportunities in business.
