Fostering Economic Resilience through ABCD Methods on a Community Engagement Program at Sidetapa Village, Buleleng, Bali ^†

Abstract

Sidetapa Village is located in Buleleng province, Bali, Indonesia. Economic resilience has become a priority due to the devastating impact of the recent pandemic on this village. This paper describes how Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) methods used within a community engagement program implemented by the University of Indonesia can develop economic resilience in that village. ABCD is a method of helping communities to develop based on their strengths and potential. This method focuses on leveraging existing strengths within the community. The tools used are the 5D Cycle of Appreciative Inquiry. The result is a digital marketing workshop to support local craft businesses.

1. Introduction

Sidetapa Village covers an area of 845 hectares and has a population of 2543 households, with a population of 6152 in 2022. The village is on a mountain with an altitude of 500 and a distance of 19 km to the nearest town. As one of Bali’s old heritage villages, Sidetapa is becoming a tourist attraction. Economic resilience has become a priority due to the devastating impact of the recent pandemic on the village that made many villagers become jobless and some of their children were forced to quit school [1].

Many definitions of economic resilience focus on the ability to recover quickly from disruptions. However, in the context of economic development, economic resilience encompasses three main attributes: the ability to recover quickly from shocks, the ability to withstand shocks, and the ability to avoid shocks altogether. Building economic resilience in a local or regional economy requires the ability to anticipate risks, assess how those risks affect key economic assets, and to build resilience.

Shocks may include a downturn in the domestic or global economy affects demand for local goods and spending; a recession in certain industries important to local economic activity; and external influences such as natural and man-made disasters, the closure of military bases and major employers, and climate change. The COVID-19 pandemic is in the rearview mirror, but communities need to stay focused on resilience efforts during a time of relative prosperity. Economic shocks are always around the corner, so communities need to be prepared. Shocks are inevitable, and the region’s long-term economic prosperity will depend on its ability to cope with disruptions to its economic underpinnings.

2. Methodology

One of the groups from the community service program held by the University of Indonesia chose Sidetapa village as their destination. This team consists of four lecturers and four students from the multimedia broadcasting major, vocational education program at the University of Indonesia. This team chose the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) method as an effort to increase the economic resilience of Sidetapa village. ABCD is a method of helping communities develop based on their strengths and potential. Rather than highlighting local shortcomings or relying on outside agencies for resources, the ABCD methodology focuses on leveraging existing strengths within the community.

According to Muslih, the ABCD method is a type of critical approach that falls within the scope of community development based on the strengths and assets of the community. ABCD is an approach that strongly emphasizes the independence of the community and the establishment of an order in which active citizens become actors and determinants of development).

ABCD is built on the principles put forward by John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann who are also the founders of The Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute. The ABCD method is oriented towards how individuals and entire communities can make a significant contribution to their own development. In principle, ABCD is an approach that wants to empower the community by starting from the assets and strengths of the community, contrary to the traditional approaches that have emerged so far, which focus more on the problems and needs of the community [2]. With these negative impacts, they become less confident, feel different and feel unable to finance or support their own life. Therefore, ABCD is an approach that starts from everything in the community as a positive asset (). In the ABCD approach, local community empowerment must be able to find the positive side of all empowerment challenges, including if there are deficiencies in the capacity and capability of human resources in the community [3]. In the downstream stages of the ABCD approach, local community advocates will focus on asset management rather than potential discovery.

Sometimes it is hard to see your everyday life and place as full of assets as we think this term refers only to money and capital investments. The assets of a community are all of the strengths and capacities of its people, the networks of support that are formally and informally organized, the physical resources of business and infrastructure, and the natural environment. As for Sidetapa Village, their assets are described in Figure 1 below.

The ABCD method has five key steps to carry out the mentoring research process known as the the 5D Cycle of Appreciative Inquiry, which are:

(a)

Define, the group leader should define a ‘positive topic choice’, the purpose of the search process or a description of the desired change;

(b)

Discovery, the process of rediscovering success is carried out through a conversation or interview process and must be a personal discovery of what is the individual contribution that gives life to an activity or business;

(c)

Dream, in a creative way and collectively look at the future that may be realized, what is highly valued is associated with what is most desired;

(d)

Design, the process where the whole community (or group) is involved in the process of learning about the strengths or assets they have in order to start using them in a constructive, inclusive and collaborative way to achieve aspirations and goals as they have set themselves;

(e)

Destiny (Do) A series of inspirational actions that support continuous learning and innovation about “what will happen”.

The Appreciative Inquiry method (AI) was developed by David Cooperrider and Srivesh Srivastva in a 1985 performance evaluation-based study in health care facilities. AI is a social constructivist approach to organizational change and development [4]. AI provides a structured approach to assessing the present state, identifying the positive things that already exist, and using the positive present to build the desired state seen on Figure 2.

Appreciative research methods offer a more public-focused method of community participation. AI methods allow members to be actively involved in the decision-making process. Consistent with a constructivist approach, conversation and storytelling during the discussion process in the AI Method allowed the group to understand the best they had [5]. They envision their future and consciously develop designs and approaches to meet their expectations. This technique enables villagers to understand, feel and respond to the development process of their community [6].

Definition—what is the request for?—is important to define the overall focus of the request (What does this village need?). This definition helps to clarify the work area to consider. This is the starting point of the cycle, but it’s a new addition. The 5D process was originally 4D including Discover, Dream, Design and Destiny [7]. A definition defines the project’s purpose, what it is, and what it needs to achieve. At this stage, the guiding question is: “What are the generating topics we would like to work on together?” The team conduct online FGDs via Zoom, a video conferencing platform that can be used through a computer desktop or mobile app and allows users to connect online for video conference meetings. There were 30 participants, including youth and village elders, attended the meeting to discuss priorities for community engagement programs. The Village Head, Komang Bayu Pamana, S.Pd also attended the meeting. He explained that before the pandemic, nearly all household head jobs were related to Bali’s tourism industry. There are boat drivers in Lovina Beach, and employees in hotels and entertainment facilities in Buleleng Area. As a result of the pandemic, now most of them were unemployed, some tried to become farmers or fishermen, others had to take odd jobs. The situation got even worse. That’s because of occasional fights or as the locals saying ‘tawuran’ in nearby villages. Many young people were unable to continue their studies and spent too much free time meaninglessly. Sidetapa was once called a red zone because of its high crime rate. The FGD decided that the ultimate goal was to increase the economic resilience of Sidetapa village.

Discovery—evaluating the best of what is’—is based on dialogue to discover ‘what works’, to rediscover and remind the villagers of their achievements, strengths and eras of excellence [8]. The process of rediscovering success is conducted through an interview process and requires personally discovering what the individual’s life-giving contribution to the activity or enterprise is. The discovery phase begins by delegating responsibility for change to the people who are interested in the change, the local entity [9]. The village of Sidetapa is a collection of old traditional houses with the concept of houses facing away from the main street with the philosophy that all the activities that take place inside the house are ignorant of the main street. Houses are used by the community for social, spiritual, economic and cultural activities and are also known as prayer houses. The building has a place of worship, two beds, a kitchen, a dining area, a place to store traditional clothing, and a place to store ceremonial items used in worship [10]. All activities take place inside the house. Another unique aspect of Sidetapa Village is the traditional rituals and dances that take place every three years at Phra Agung Temple. Aside from the cultural arts, there is also the Mampeh Waterfall on the west side of the village, about 1.5 km (about an hour’s walk) from the village centre. Mampa Waterfall is one of the main tourist attractions in Sidetapa Village. The village chief also remembers when Sidetapa was once famous as a village of bamboo craftsmen. Bamboo crafts from Side Tapa are known in the Buleleng area and are starting to be sold in some shops in Denpasar, the capital of Bali.

Dream—imagining “what could be”—imagining uses past achievements and successes identified during the discovery phase to imagine new possibilities and envision a desired future [11]. They can identify their dreams for Sidetapa. They have the ability to project it into their desires, hopes, and aspirations for the future. At this stage of the in-depth interviews conducted also resulted in a statement that there was a desire from the village head to empower village youth for a positive activity. There is a desire to make woven bamboo crafts from the village known to the wider community. There is hope to turn their village into a tourist village.

The tourism village is seen as a form of tourism industry in the form of activities to actualize identical tourist trips including a number of activities that are appealing, seducing, encouraging tourists as consumers to use products from the tourist village or take a tour to the tourist village or called tourism village marketing [12]. According to Soekadijo, the components of the tourism product itself consists of tourist transportation, tourist attractions, and tourism accommodation). To package one area into a tourist destination, as well as in planning the development of a tourism area, it is necessary to consider natural factors, uniqueness, involvement of local workers, considerations of income justice and equity, as a tourist village that aims to prosper the local community, according to Pitana [13]. Cahya Bangun states that the concept of people-oriented development is defined as a concept characterized by the emphasis on the people’s economy or people’s empowerment. The potential that can also be excelled in the development of tourist villages is the livelihood of most of the village women, namely as bamboo weavers, where later visiting tourists can join in weaving with craftsmen and also buy handicrafts from the local community.

Design—determining ‘what should be’—brings together the stories from discovery with the imagination and creativity from dream. Design brings the ‘best of what is’ together with ‘what might be’, to create ‘what should be—the ideal’ [14]. At this stage, the focus is on making tourist villages, which can be carried out simultaneously with developing woven bamboo MSMEs. The use of digital marketing for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to increase the marketing of Sidetapa’s Bamboo craft is something that can be carried out for villagers in providing information to consumers about their products. This needs to involve the younger generation from Sidetapa village to manage their digital marketing.

Delivery/Destiny—creating ‘What Will Be’—is the fifth stage of the 5D process and identifies how the design will be delivered and how it will be incorporated into groups, communities and organizations in the village [15]. The aim is to build cultural and entrepreneurial values in accordance with the potential of local superior products, which in the implementation of village development are different from those of urban communities, so that the achievement of development will be more optimal because it is in accordance with the community environment and regional potential.

3. Results and Discussion

The results are that the community service team will empower the community by providing training to increase the capacity of MSME independence with creative digital marketing strategies which will ultimately improve the welfare of the community in Sidatapa Village. This training is also expected to build an entrepreneurial spirit for MSMEs, young people and women, so that it will provide economic resilience for the village. The results of this empowerment are expected to grow MSMEs which are individuals who have high skills and adopt an empowerment perspective which is interpreted as benefiting others and sustainable innovation for regional development. This activity also applies the development of digital technology so that there are no products without a market, and scattered markets can be accessed through digital platforms, through increasing public awareness and participation to become good hosts, training in tourism services and improving the quality of industrial products, as well as enhancing creative and assistance in marketing products through digital media.

Through the use of digital marketing, the villagers can convey their ideas or thoughts to many people effectively and respectfully [16]. In addition, by having the ability to use Instagram social media information technology, they have broad opportunities to actualize all their potential in marketing their products. A poll was made to decide which social media they wanted to learn, and they chose Instagram since the youngsters have prior knowledge about this application. Yet, it is important to understand the techniques in utilizing Instagram social media information technology and how to put out good marketing, as well as how they provide information through media that can now reach various remote areas both locally, nationally and internationally.

4. Conclusions

The ABCD method is a type of critical approach that falls within the scope of community development based on the strengths and assets of the community. This method is suitable for exploring the assets of Sidetapa Village. The main point of ABCD is the focus on social relationships. Formal and informal associations, networks and extended families are treated as assets and as means of mobilizing other community assets. By treating relationships as assets, ABCD is a practical application of the concept of social capital. By developing the potential of MSMEs, it is not only able to improve the welfare of owners and workers but also become a center for education, provide comparative studies for other MSMEs in Indonesia, and represent guidance and empowerment of MSMEs in Sidatapa Village.

The digital marketing workshop will directly benefit Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Sidetapa village, Buleleng, in terms of using digital marketing in promoting commercialization of readily applicable products. These skills and abilities are highly valued assets to promote bamboo products in Sidetapa village. The end goal is to build economic resilience in Sidatapa Village.