Dindin Komarudin was moved to help develop the children’s creativity and improve their standard of living by "repurposing" the hidden potential of street children through Kumala Foundation.
By
Elsa Emiria Leba
·6 minutes read
ARSIP PRIBADI
Dindin Komarudin
Dindin Komarudin, 48, knows that street children have potential. Nicknamed Abah (“Daddy”) Dindin, he was moved to help develop the children’s creativity and improve their standard of living by "repurposing" the hidden potential of street children through Kumala Foundation.
Abah Dindin\'s reason for helping street children is personal. His story began in 2000, when he left Bandung and came to Jakarta in search of a job. He stopped at a shelter for street children in the Pondok Kopi and Pademangan areas. There, he was impressed by the kindness of street children, who shared their food with him when he ran out of money.
The children were happy because I always displayed everything they made, good or bad.
Since then, he continued to develop his relationship with the street children and realized that the children had a lot of potential. They could sing, paint, play musical instruments, compose poetry, and make crafts from repurposed waste. Unfortunately, their talents and skills were not nurtured.
In 2001, Abah Dindin started working as a social worker in Jakarta. In 2003, he started a new job at Setia Kawan Raharja (Sekar) Foundation in Tanjung Priok. At this foundation, he and the street children under his care attempted to make saleable products from recycled paper using whatever tools they had at hand, as well as their creativity.
"We grew increasingly interested in what we were doing. The children were happy because I always displayed everything they made, good or bad,” Abah Dindin said on Thursday (14/1/2021) in North Jakarta.
After several training and mentoring activities, the recycled paper the street children made improved in quality. In 2004, the Sekar Foundation collaborated with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to supply materials from a paper company in Bandung.
Abah Dindin was the chairman of the Sekar Foundation at that time. However, he left the foundation to focus on his social activities for street children and to continue making recycled paper with them.
The activity was held by the Natural Independent Business Creative Foundation or the Kumala Foundation which was founded by Dindin Komarudin. The foundation, aims to empower marginalized people, especially street children, through activities for making recycled paper, handicrafts and waste banks.
In December 2008, he founded Yayasan Kreatif Usaha Mandiri Alami (Kumala), a foundation with a mission to empower marginalized people, especially street children, by making and selling recycled paper and handicrafts, as well as through a waste bank.
The foundation, which is located in Tanjung Priok, made significant progress a few years after is establishment. In 2011, Abah Dindin met an official from PT Pertamina Hulu Energi Offshore North West Java (PHE ONWJ) on a radio program. That meeting resulted in Kumala Foundation becoming a social partner of PHE ONWJ. The foundation received frequent shipments of used paper and wooden pallets as materials for making recycled paper. Over time, the partnership between Kumala and PHE ONWJ expanded to include the procurement of paper bags for different activities.
The street children also received invitations to train many communities in Indonesia how to process paper and organic waste. Involving the street children to participate as trainers is part of Pertamina’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) 5R++ program, which refers to reduce, reuse, recycle, resell, and reshare.
"We encourage street children to not be objects, but subjects. They learn to take responsibility and to share the knowledge they have acquired with others. It is always [a circle],” said Abah Dindin.
Besides making recycled paper, Kumala Foundation also collaborates with PHE ONWJ on a waste bank program. This empowerment program works with several scavenger communities in North Jakarta that total about 180 scavengers.
House of creativity
Kumala Foundation is more than just a shelter for street children, with Abah Dindin pointing out that the foundation was a “house of creativity”. He added that to get to where it was now, the community had traversed a variety of challenges. In the past, they frequently faced accusations from the local residents of stealing when something went missing in the neighborhood. The local residents also carried out frequent “raids” at the place where they gathered to search for missing items.
Abah Dindin implemented a number of strategies at the outset of establishing the foundation to ensure that its existence would be received well. For example, he deliberately named the foundation after his wife so it would be more acceptable to the surrounding community. To improve their image in the eyes of the local residents, he often encouraged the street children to volunteer in community activities.
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Dindin Komarudin
The local community’s stigma against the street children began to diminish, and the residents of Tanjung Priok slowly opened up to them over the next two years. Later, they started to donate food to the foundation.
Abah Dindin is always supportive of street children who want to change, and the term “street children” refers to anyone living on the streets, not a specific age range.
In 2017, at the request of the foundation’s corporate partners, Abah Dindin began counting the number of children who had benefited from the foundation and its programs. In doing so, he discovered that 98 street children were now working or contributing as trainers at Kumala Foundation, and that they had trained about 13,000 people how to recycle waste.
They are proud because they feel accepted and humanized through this activity, like they have a family.
The street children that Abah Dindin recorded are only a small part of the foundation’s members, who come from a number of regions including Java, South Sumatra, North Sumatra and Papua.
Kumala Foundation currently has 10 active members who earn a monthly or an hourly wage. These members were active in producing recycled paper and training others how to make the products. They produce from 400 to 500 sheets of A4-size paper in a day and earn Rp 30,000 every day as trainers. They are also provided with room and board.
Most of the street children who participate in the paper recycling activities get off the streets, willingly giving up the chance to earn Rp 100,000 to Rp 150,000 a day from busking.
"This was once a big question for me, why they choose to stay [at the foundation],” said Abah Dindin. “They say they need someplace where they were safe and respected. They are proud because they feel accepted and humanized through this activity, like they have a family,” he said.
Dindin Komarudin
Born: Bandung, 20 Dec. 1972
Wife: Linda Kumala
Children: Three
Education: Bandung College of Social Welfare/Social Welfare Polytechnic (STKS/Poltekesos)
Occupation: Chairman, Kreatif Usaha Mandiri Alami (Kumala) Foundation
