IPB Students Trains The Women Farmers Group to Develop MSME
As one of the efforts to advance the society's economy, the government had been eager to enhance the quality of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSME). The students did not want to be missing in contribution. Five students of the Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), encouraged the Women Farmers Group (KWT) of Cikarawang Village to develop and enhance the quality of products that were being produced by the MSME.
The five students were Septiyani Putri Mahanani, Abdul Muis Lubis, Ramadona Fisna Wanda, Dicky Kartiwa Maulana, and Salma Nur Adillah. The program that was being developed was called Women Farmers Group Empowerment (PEKA). This PEKA program was focused to enhance the product of MSMEs, because all this time, the MSMEs that were run by KWT did not have a proper packaging, labeling, and standardized food certification.
"The product enhancement aims to increase the sale value of MSME's products so it can be accepted in the market," said Septiyani, the leader of team PEKA.
The main purpose of this PEKA program was to increase the income of Women Farmers Group's MSMEs of Cikarawang Village, so labeling and product certification were very necessary. Not only that, the PEKA team also wanted to conduct a branding training to create a bigger market.
The programs that PEKA did were training on an adequate packaging and labeling procedure, education on food safety and certification, and training on branding through social media. To get the Certificate of Food Production of Domestic Industry (P-IRT) was coordinating with the Health Department, whereas the product marketing was done by coordinating with PKK women, through the bazaar and social media.
This program that is supervised by Lilis Sucahyo, S.TP., M.Si, is one of the programs that is participating in the Student Creativity Program (PKM). Currently, PEKA program has successfully helped in the production of featured products like sweet potato chips, purple sweet potatoes juice, cassava chips, mocaf chips, mocaf brownies, mocaf nastar, rengginang, and banana chips.
"In the future, we will help the development of new products' innovation and also help the creation of a market of product marketing," said Septiyani.
Septiyani is optimistic that the marketing opportunity and MSME's product demand in the future are promising, so new innovation will always be needed to create a likable product.
