Economic Empowerment of the Poor Society in Sigi Regency, Central Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

Abstract

The research objectives were to identify the processes, benefits, and efforts of implementing economic empowerment programs and formulating an economic empowerment model for the poor society in Sigi Regency. The data were obtained through a survey, structured interview, list of pair-wise comparison questions. A survey was conducted by providing a closed questionnaire based on a Likert scale with five answer choices, given to 113 samples: community administrators and members of micro-small scale business groups selected using a snowball sampling technique. Structured interview technique was with interview guidelines applied to regional apparatus organization, Regional People's Representative Assembly, Head of Sub-District (Camat), and Village Heads. A list of pair-wise comparison questions was to program facilitators. The analytical method used was a qualitative descriptive analysis method for implementing community empowerment and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method for the Economic Empowerment Model for the poor in Sigi Regency. Implementation of community empowerment in Sigi Regency included the benefits of assistance received, procedures for requesting assistance, procedures for aid realization, the accuracy of aid targeting, quality and capacity of program assistants, benefits of local economic development, implementation of assistance, implementation of monitoring and evaluation. Those implementations had been running well based on the respondent's assessment. The process of raising awareness and shaping people's behavior, transforming knowledge, and increasing the capacity of the community, also received good responses. Likewise, group opportunities, group potential and protection, community, participation, and entrepreneurship received good responses. The Empowerment Model for the poor in disaster-prone areas was Economic Empowerment with the dominant role of assistants as empowerment actors, prioritizing protection and community support in their business activities.