IPB Students Help Single Moms in Kampung Janda in Becoming The Pioneer of Prosperous Family
A complete prosperous family must be a dream for every family. However, what we can do if a separation is happened in a household due to various factors. According to data from Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) 2010, in Indonesia there are 5.8 percents of entire Indonesian population with are widows and 1.4 percent are widowers. Based on the information, the population of widow status in Indonesia is more than widower status. In Indonesia, there is an area with quite high number of widows population, this area is called Kampung Janda. This area is located in Cibaruyut Village, Disctrict Cigombong, Bogor Regency, West Java. The high number of widows in this area is caused by high early marriage and divorce rate, low education level, high mortality resulted by sickness and landslide victim because majority of the head of household in this village work as illegal sand digger.
“This village is included in area of RW 7 which consists of five neighborhood (RT), and there are about 30 widows. In this area the education level is very low with average only elementary school (SD) graduate. Junior High School (SMP) or High School (SMA) are located very far from this village, so people are reluctant to continue Junior High School and High School. And right after graduating Elementary School, many girls are married at quite young age by their parents,” said Mr. Endang, Chief of Community Association of Kampung Janda.
Based on this condition, a group of students from Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, Faculty of Human Ecology, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) are motivated to initiate a prosperous family program for widowed mothers who has double burden in that village. This program is given name Ngoject or Single Mom’s Project. Those students are Wulan Sari Putri Hidayat, Nabilah, Raihan ‘Ainun Hasanah, dan Marsha Listiyani, and sre supervised by their supervisor Dr. Ir. Istiqlaliyah Muflikhati, M.Si. This program is one of Student Creativity Program of Community Service field (PKM-M) 2018.
“A properous family must be a dream for every family. Still what if we become a single parent. This certainly will add more responsibilities to a mother who already has to take care the domestic needs and educate her children then has to be the parent who earn a living as well. This also must be our concern as a community in order to create happy and prosperous families,” Wulan said. Actually government is already socializing about eight family functions. Function of spiritual, social culture, affection, protection, reproduction, socialization and education, economy, and community coaching. However, it seems like this socialization has not reached all area yet, especially in remote or rural area. “Therefore, we feel the need to develop our program because of the double burden faced by all these single parents will affect the parenting pattern, so there will be a crucial issue because it also will indirectly affect national development, given that a mother is the most important figure as first educator in family,” Wulan explained.
In this program has joined as many as 13 people single mom, and we conduct the program twice a week. The program consists of briefing about eight family functions, video explanation, and games that illustrate eight family functions. Hereafter an ambassador will be chosen based on the given test and their activity. This ambassador will help the sustainability of the program. From eight family function, function of economy is the one that will be more developed from this program in order to empower those single mothers in increasing their household income. In addition, in this program will also be established Dasa Wisma to help the sustainability of this program. The participants of Ngoject will be divide into some groups per neighborhood (RT), and they will be the leader of each Dasa Wisma and responsible in briefing eight family function and other activities, and later on will be given a pocket book about eight family functions.
“This program hopefully will be able to improve the knowledge of the importance of eight family function. Growing the awareness in applying these eight functions in family daily life. The realization of happiness and prosperity in single parent family is what we really expected, and the most importance is we hope single moms who has joined in this Ngoject program can become pioneers or good example for other single moms in Indonesia,” Wulan implied. Mister Endang as the Chief of Community Associate (RW) in Kampung Janda also stated that this program is a very good and suitable program for this village to improve the prosperity and happiness of the local people, especially the single parents in this village. According to him, this kind of program have not been conducted before. (qa)
