About Us
Kitong Bisa Foundation
Kitong Bisa was first established in 2009 as a learning center in Serui, Papua aims to inspire young Papuan kids to get a better education, be successful and get out from below poverty line. Currently, we have 4 learning centers in Fakfak, Jayapura, Serui and Merauke. We teach students with our tailored curriculum in English, to cater behavioural change by attaining soft skills, creative thinking, as well as entrepreneurial acumen. Kitong Bisa has been educating more than 600 kids across Papua.
Due to that success, Kitong Bisa has been professionally inquired to provide consultancies for youth and various nonprofit organizations to start social initiatives, following the path of Kitong Bisa. Thus, from a small learning center, Kitong Bisa had than evolved into a consulting management for other nonprofits, both national and international institutions. In 2015, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Australia hired KITONG BISA, through their Australia Awards scholarship program, to deliver trainings in 5 Geographic focused provinces (Aceh, NTT, NTB, Papua and Papua Barat). This training was aimed to enhance the capabilities of young people in those areas to start social initiatives to solve social issues in their areas. As the output of this program, 4 more learning centers were formed and have been operating to date.
More other successful projects were conducted in cooperation with private sector, such as Garuda Indonesia, to develop and equipped classrooms in some of the learning centers. Other companies such as PT. Freeport Indonesia, which funded a program to send teachers trainers to remote areas to train local teachers there to enhance their teaching capabilities to provide quality learning. Another one was the collaboration with the USA embassy in Indonesia to conduct meet and greet between the USA ambassadors with youth activists in Papua and Papua Barat.
As the pioneer in Nonprofit Management and CSR consultant, Kitong Bisa has attracted attention from different media. Some coverage can be seen in Jakarta globe news channel “Perspective Show”, Berita Satu “DK Show”, Margin Magazine of Australia, and also invitations to speak in various events both domestics and overseas. Kitong Bisa and the organization it has been helping possess strong online presence (see at our website: www.kitongbisa.com). For example, Papua scholarship club with more than 20,000 members, Papua career center with more than 9,000 members, and Quatmo Foundation in Vietnam with more than 1,500 members. This network is useful to share success stories, information and inspiration to the whole members of the organization, as well as branding for sponsors.
Kitong Bisa Enterprise
Kitong Bisa Enterprise is a social enterprise which focuses in educating, enabling, and empowering the marginalized community in Indonesia, focusing on women and youth, especially in the eastern part of Indonesia to have a better livelihood. It was founded in late 2017 and have been legalized in 2018, with an official business entity, operating and has been manufacturing and selling hundreds of products units both nationally and internationally.
We offer entrepreneurial incubation, training, mentoring, and access to markets activities held in provinces with unemployment rates above the national average in Indonesia, especially those from high school and vocational graduates, as the main beneficiaries. We focus on female due to the facts that in the eastern part of Indonesia, Females are actually the backbone of most families economics. Thus, by lifting up females out of Poverty, we would eventually help a lot of families (multiplier effects) out from the poverty line. Furthermore, the reason why we are focusing on vocational and high school is that most of the unemployment in Indonesia, are contributed by those institutions’ graduates.
We encourage and facilitate more women and youth in Indonesia to get involved in the economy, by becoming entrepreneurs which will design products needed by our customer. We will help to manufacture and sell the products to the wider market, by utilizing online technology as the primary means. This is due to significant growth of internet penetration and coverage in Indonesia, and in facts, it is amongst the highest globally. Thus, a solution to solve the unemployment issue, which is caused by the unavailability of jobs, is to encourage more females and youth as business women and men.
Currently, we are in the development of Kitong Shop (KITOS) and Kitong E-learning which will be available in www.kitongbisa.com in mid-2019. In that online platforms, various Social, culture and eco-friendly products, which are the values and competitive advantages of our products will be sold. We are committed to delivering high quality, ergonomic, yet, environmental friendly Papuan ethnic-based products, which are needed by our customer to support their daily activities.
Kitong Bisa Enterprise has trained more than 200 vocational students, mostly Women in Fakfak, West Papua and Banda Aceh, Aceh Province, on basic business, IT, and soft skills. The program was funded by the Australian Alumni Grant Scheme. Due to that success, more and more national and international entities request collaboration with us. The latest one was in 2018, in which we had trained more than 150 more students to be online business women and men, working together with Alpha-i NUSA, and funded by USAID and University of Melbourne through a program called: “Student Engagement Grant Program”.
Kitong Bisa Learning Center
As the vision of Kitong Bisa Foundation as a whole, which is to incubate entrepreneurial mindset as early as possible, we open learning centers in different places to teach the entrepreneurial skills and acumen in an informal way. We have this Unique, research-based curriculum called: RESPECT, in which utilizing a set of tools while teaching English, we monitor the progress of behavioural change of the Kids week by week.
RESPECT stands for a set of behavioural components, which makes up a successful entrepreneur. They learn these components progressively since they were in their elementary school, then when they are in high school, they will learn how to make products and sell it. So, in the early ages, we focus more on the behavioural change, whereas after they reach their high school, they learn the “how to” or the actual skills of an entrepreneur.
Our current learning centers are in Yapen (the first learning center), Jayapura (two learning centers), Merauke, and Fakfak. In 2019, we are planning to scale up our impacts by reaching more kids from the underprivileged background by opening more learning centers, as below picture.
Each of the learning centers will have uniqueness based on the local potentials, aligned with teaching RESPECT as outlined above. Yapen is focusing on the commodity businesses and sustainable blue tourism based products, Jayapura focuses on the urban-based products needs, Merauke is more into forest and nature related products, and Fakfak is close with the women’s personal touch (handmade) products. The designed as outlined in the Kitong Bisa Enterprise Homepage are made by the students in the learning centers and refined by our product designers to be sold nationally and internationally.