Mountain biking in Jakarta?

It has been a while now since I am interning in Jakarta. I never imagined this city to have a thriving adventure sports scene.

It was only during a casual lunch chat with my colleagues that I came to know about a multitude of options like paragliding, water sports, mountain biking etc. that are easily available in Jakarta. I got an invitation to join them to Puncak Highlands, a mountainous area about 65 miles southwest of Jakarta. I had never tried mountain biking before and I always perceived it to be a dangerous activity. Nonetheless, I reluctantly agreed not knowing what lay in store for me.

However, I must admit; it was an exhilarating experience and now it has become a staple weekend activity for me here.

It takes around 2-3 hours to reach Puncak from Jakarta city center depending on the traffic. But once there, it’s an entirely different feel. This place is an oasis away from the noise and pollution of the city. 


Generally the bike ride starts near the now popular Rindu Alam restaurant and goes downhill through tea plantations and villages on a 20 miles run to the start of the Puncak road at Ciawi. 

The rolling green hills with luxuriant tea plantations have been associated with Puncak for centuries, and they are a pleasant sight along the way up. The two biggest plantations here are Ciliwung and Gunung Mas. The route through the Ciliwung tea plantation comes with a small entry charge. Here other options like motocross bikes, 4x4 jeeps, and horses too are available for rent.

I have observed that mountain biking is the most popular outdoor activity here. Jakarta is the mountain biking hub in South East Asia. It has the biggest community of mountain bikers and also boasts the largest franchise and showrooms of mountain biking equipment and accessories.

And the best part is….this activity has given me an opportunity to meet some fascinating people from various walks of life who are brought together by a common thread. I have found an eclectic group comprising a computer engineering, an advertising professional, an economist, an entrepreneur and a taxi driver. We catch up every Sunday and venture out to Puncak.

I have had some great weekends so far and I have enjoyed every bit of my new found activity.

Progress out of Poverty Index

The poverty line is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a given country. The poverty line is usually determined by finding the total cost of all the essential resources that an average human adult consumes in one year. At its most basic, the poverty line is a statistical exercise, an attempt to track poverty over time and across specific geographies. It can be used to assess progress in the fight against poverty. The common international poverty line has in the past been roughly $1 a day. In 2008, the World Bank came out with a revised figure of $1.25 at 2005 purchasing-power parity (PPP).

However, increasingly this exercise of assessing poverty is courting controversy as governments have been blamed for fudging data to suit their perspectives. If a reformist stance needs to be communicated, the line is lowered so more people seem better off. And if an international donor is being wooed, the line is raised so that more people seem worse off and in need of aid.

This branch of economics related to the measurement of poverty is anyways one of the most esoteric, and taps into a statistics realm beyond the grasp of most except the most technically savvy.

So what measure should the development world rely on….especially in microfinance….disbursing funds to the poorest of the poor? How does one assess the eligibility, the genuineness and most importantly evaluate the impact of lending?  

I have come across this relatively simpler and more accurate tool that measures the poverty levels of groups and individuals called the Progress out of Poverty Index^TM (PPI™) during my stint here at Grameen Foundation Indonesia.

The PPI is based on an approach developed by Mark Schreiner of Microfinance Risk Management, L.L.C. It is a user-friendly tool that estimates the likelihood that clients’ fall below the national poverty line or the international $1/Day/PPP and $2/Day/PPP poverty lines.

Using the PPI, Micro Finance Institutions can better determine their clients’ needs, the programs that are most effective, how quickly clients’ poverty get alleviated, and what elements help them to move out of poverty faster. Each country has a specific PPI that, while retaining a universal methodology, is based on a country's best nationally representative income and expenditure household survey.

Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), the Ford Foundation and the Grameen Foundation endorse the use of rigorous poverty assessment tools and believe the PPI is a highly effective tool for those institutions interested in measuring the likelihood of client poverty.

For each country, the process starts with a nationally representative income and/or expenditure survey. The data from the survey is analyzed to rank indicators that strongly correlate with poverty. These indicators are then tested and vetted with local MFIs and their representatives. The results of the PPI allow an MFI to make informed decisions and improve their processes. 

By using the PPI over time, MFIs can:

• Improve mission adherence
• Improve scrutiny and selection of target clients
• Improve products and programs that are better suited to their target clients
• Increase their competitive edge, profitability, and ability to retain clients by responding more quickly and effectively to changes in their communities 
• Provide timely and accurate information to their investors

Android and development 2

2.   Ruma’s “Market Intelligence” in Indonesia

Ruma is a social enterprise that empowers the poor using mobile phone technology. It started as a pilot project of Grameen Foundation and Qualcomm and has now metamorphosed into an enterprise serving millions of clients. Ruma has recruited and trained over 10,000 low-income entrepreneurs in Indonesia, of which 85% are women, to sell prepaid airtime, electricity and other value added services. Now, Android powered tablets are helping these low-income entrepreneurs act as conduits for gathering market intelligence across Indonesia.

The low-income household market is probably the most difficult market to obtain  information. Goods are sold through 2 million plus warungs (small shops), scattered throughout Indonesia. The distribution of the goods goes through multiple layers of distributors, making information gathering very expensive.

Through the mobile survey product built on the Android platform and administered on smartphones and tablets, consumer goods companies like Danone and Nestle contract Ruma to obtain rapid market information from the Ruma entrepreneur network. Over 70% of Ruma’s entrepreneurs were already selling basic consumer goods when they were recruited to the network. The existing network of thousands of shops and over one million end consumers can provide market research professionals with valuable insights.

Surveys with a broad sample with only a select number of questions can be administered in real time via SMS or through Telesurvey. Whereas an in-depth study of products through focus group discussions or a pilot of the product can be conducted using a customized data collection application.

Ruma believes that by providing companies with better access information to the low-income segment, companies can create products that address the segments true needs.

So why GF prefers Android to other operating systems?

·      Open source - GF can customize the phones for improved use of power and to make applications usable when the phones aren't connected to the network

·      Fastest growing OS - Phone prices are bound to drop

Why GF uses smartphones / tablets when feature phones are cheaper and more popular (especially in the underdeveloped world)?

·      Location data and photographs are possible with GPS & camera

·      Large data can be stored on external memory cards

·      Input and storage of data on the phones is possible even when the user is out of range of a cellular network. This information is uploaded once the user moves within range of the network

·      Improved analytics capabilities (with salesforce.com)

Android and development 1

Development organizations and aid agencies have been struggling for a while now to use technology to improve their efficiency and thereby create an improved impact on the recipients. It is a well documented and researched aspect of development.

Fortunately with mobile phones and their rapid scale to ubiquity, the lengthy pursuit of the development world seems to have met fruition. Currently, no other technology holds as much promise for the development sector as mobiles.

With an aim to empower people in the underdeveloped world and to deliver maximum bang for the buck, increasing number of device makers, cellular operators and development agencies are now coming together to deploy feature / smart phones with text information services and applications on health care, weather, crop pricing, agriculture practices, population studies etc. What really is hastening this process is the availability of a multitude of device and platform options.

Android is one such platform (operating system) that is opening a lot of avenues for data collection and field research management specifically targeted to the development sector. It is a Linux-based operating system developed by the Open Handset Alliance for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Google purchased it in 2005 and has since then led almost a movement towards creating a platform that’s free, open source and stable.

A few instances of successful implementations of technology especially Android in development sector:

1.   Grameen Foundation’s “Community Knowledge Workers” (CKW) in Uganda

400 CKWs in Uganda are using Android phones loaded with an open-source data-collection application that feeds data into salesforce. These phones are powered by batteries that can be recharged via electricity, solar and bicycle. GF offers farmers loans to buy an Android phone loaded with information about when and how to plant crops, care for farm animals and find markets for products.

Those farmers (CKWs) then serve as experts in their villages. Other people turn to them with questions about crops or farm animals, and the knowledge workers find answers in information loaded on the phones. The knowledge workers also gather information about the farmers they talk to.

The workers have interacted with over 25,000 households so far. 75 percent of farmers say they find the information offered by the knowledge workers to be very useful, and 80 percent said they acted on information they received at least once. Information from CKWs have helped them in timing their planting activities based on weather information, asking for better prices from traders, going to markets where they can get better prices and providing better care for their livestock.

The CKWs must buy the phones and charging stations. They can pay them off monthly, a process that takes about two years. They get paid for their work and can earn up to $25 a month.

GF is hoping to make the project self-sustaining and has partnered with other agencies that see value in the network of CKWs. The World Bank, Heifer International and others are now paying GF for data that CKWs collect by conducting surveys with villagers.

18 till I die....

Susi (left) with her mother Mida (right) outside their house.

I  am working with the Grameen Foundation (GF) in Jakarta, Indonesia these three months.  GF helps the world's poorest, especially women, improve their lives and escape poverty by helping to provide access to new ways to generate income, access to appropriate financial services (such as savings accounts, small loans) and important information on health, crops, and finances.  I was visiting some GF supported social enterprises in Tangerang outside Jakarta a week back. I observed that amongst all the women micro-entrepreneurs affiliated to the social enterprises, there was a young girl with quite a feisty demeanor. Her confidence and ideas intrigued me and I got talking with her.

I found that her name was Susi; she is 18 and a micro-entrepreneur who uses GF AppLab’s talktime credit app to conduct business. Essentially, she sells prepaid mobile minutes in her community and makes about IDR 15000 – 20000 ($1.6 – 2.1) everyday.

She chose to become a micro-entrepreneur about 2 years back after her father lost his job as a construction laborer. She had to give up on her education in order to rescue her family of 7 from sinking deeper into poverty. She is proud of her entrepreneurial skills and dreams to open her own grocery store. Thanks to her efforts, her father has been able to buy a motorcycle and he now operates as a motorcycle messenger.

I asked her what does she intend doing going forward…. does she want to get back to education…. does she want to stop now that her father has a stable income?

She promptly replied, “I want to be 18 till I die…. this way I can keep making good money  and I can keep supporting my family.”