Anan, 20, a second semester student who is trained at Rumah Kreatif dan Pintar Foundation, Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, makes a chair from a used drum at the foundation\'s office Saturday (11/2). Anan is one of the 85 children from poor families who are educated by the foundation. The children from the level of elementary school to university are taught with knowledge and creativity to enable them to face their future by becoming creative entrepreneurs with high education.
A wooden house near the traffic light at the T-junction on Jl. Sutoyo, Banjarmasin, already looked old and dull. At first glance, there is nothing interesting on the building of the old house except a banner reading "Creative and Smart Home" on the front of the house.
Upon entering the house through the door facing the alley, one can see various kinds of handicraft on display. Different types of clothes and sasirangan fabric (traditional Banjar fabric) are hung, with different models of bags sitting in the showcase and trinkets on the window. In the living room, there is a set of furniture made from recycled materials.
On Saturday afternoon, several people were found in the Creative and Smart Home, busy with their respective activities. On the front porch of the house, Anan, 20, was measuring an iron bar that he would cut into pieces. These iron pieces were then mounted on a drum that had been cut and split into four parts using a welder.
"Anan was making a set of chairs ordered by the people. The models of the chairs being made were like the ones in the living room. A set of chairs (four) costs Rp 1 million," the chairman of the foundation of the Creative and Smart Home, Muhammad Aripin, said.
On the other porch beside the house, Muhammad Rizky Zainal, 18, and Erik Kurniawan, 39, looked busy mixing cement. When Erik mixed the cement, Zainal would take a towel and put it into a bucket of water. The towel was then removed and squeezed, then put into a bucket of cement paste.
For a few minutes, Erik lathered the towel in the cement paste. After that, it was removed and placed on a pillar exposed to the sun. "That was the process of making a vase like the one on display in the living room. It was being dried. After that, the vase was painted," Erik said.
All the products produced at the Creative and Smart Home in that afternoon were made of used goods. "Here, we are creative with used goods or waste. All are utilized and processed into a product with economic value," Aripin said.
Disadvantaged families
According to Aripin, the foundation of the Creative and Smart Home – which he founded in 2014 as a home for children, especially those coming from disadvantaged families –is a place to learn how to be creative and smart. With such knowledge and creativity, they are expected to have a better future as creative entrepreneurs.
Currently, there are 85 children from primary schools through colleges who are empowered by the foundation. The children come from different backgrounds. There are children from poor families, school dropouts, victims of divorced parents and drug addicts. Almost all of them come from families with poor backgrounds.
Anan, for example, said he was lucky to join the Creative and Smart Home while pursuing his college education. According to the second semester student majoring in mechanical engineering at a private college in Banjarmasin, he would never get into college if he relied on his parents.
"Parents in the village have a difficult life. My father is just a worker in an oil palm plantation, while my mother is a farmer. Since graduating from junior high school, my parents put me at the orphanage. Now, I can go to the college with my own money," he said. He is the eldest of two brothers, both of whom are determined to be able to graduate from college to make their parents proud.
A similar fate was also experienced by Zainal, who is now studying at the same campus with Anan, also as a mechanical engineering major. According to the second semester student, his parents have been divorced since he was small. He was then raised by his maternal grandmother because his mother remarried to another man and his father died.
"When living with my grandma, I rarely went home. I preferred hanging out with friends on the streets. I once became a drug courier when I was in junior high school. Every time I delivered a drug package, I was paid Rp 50,000," he said.
Despite living on the streets, Zainal said he did not use drugs and continued his studies. He then joined the Creative and Smart Home when he was Grade 11 in secondary vocational school. "Here, I learned many things. In addition to acquiring a variety of skills, I also learned to get along and communicate with others. Gradually, my feeling of being inferior was gone," said Zainal, who aspired to build a creative house outside the city of Banjarmasin after graduating from college.
Aripin, who also came from a poor family, said the Creative and Smart Home is a non-profit institution that is now focusing on fostering and empowering 85 children. However, the foundation remains open to providing training to children from other communities.
"I prepare the 85 children to become creative entrepreneurs. They should be able to live on their own, support their families, and other persons. However, before that, they must first obtain a degree," he said.
Aripin said funds for their education were set aside from the proceeds of the sales of goods made at the Creative and Smart Home. "Our turnover reaches about Rp 10 million to Rp 20 million a month," he said.
Support
Based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), in 2015 there were 29,980 poor people in the city of Banjarmasin, or 4.44 percent of the total population. The people who worked (aged 15 years and above) were mostly high school graduates or from lower education levels (80.26 percent) while those who had diplomas and degrees from colleges comprised 19.74 percent of the total of the population of Banjarmasin, which has 675,440 people.
In January, 2016, the Creative and Smart House formally received full support from the mayor of Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Ibn Sina. The Banjarmasin city administration agreed to lend a building that was formerly a public health center to become the office as well as display room of the creative house. Previously, Aripin’s house was used as the foundation’s office.
According to Arief Budiman, a lecturer at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Mangkurat, creating an entrepreneur is not easy. There are many factors that influence it, such as natural gifts as well as social, cultural and environmental conditions.
Even so, Arief said, an attempt to create creative entrepreneurs like in the Creative and Smart Home should be appreciated. In the foundation, the children were empowered and told not be involved in negative activities. There were also efforts to reduce waste by utilizing used goods. "Creating a social entrepreneur is very difficult. As the foundation brings a positive impact on many people, it needs to be further supported. Both the government and the private sector should continue to support it," Arief said.
