By Elisabeth Uru Ndaya

Minister of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, Bintang Puspayoga revealed, based on national statistic data in 2019, 131 million populations almost half of Indonesia’s is women. This data illustrates that women are a contributor to half the strength of human resources in Indonesia. Currently, Indonesia faces  various challenges to deal the covid 19 pandemic, both in terms of women's health and social-economic. In terms of the economy, many female workers are laid off from their jobs, and worse it will be more difficult for women who head families and lack-prosperous women to do businesses, due to the loss of distributors and markets.

The women empowerment program through the HEMAT Stube Multiplication in Sumba helped to answer the economic problems faced by most Sumba women today, especially in Tanatuku Village, Nggaha Ori Angu District. The strategic effort to answer the problem of the helplessness is to empower women through a weaving program that is currently being carried out.

Sunday, December 13, 2020, at 15.00 Sumba time, participants of the Stube HEMAT weaving group gathered to evaluate activities and consolidate the group that has been running for about 6 months. This activity was guided by May Nggiri, a representative of church council of Karunggu Sumba Christian Church (GKS) as well as participants of weaving groups. She is very grateful and grateful with the presence of the program from Stube HEMAT to make the young people and women in GKS Karunggu more productive. This program has helped the church with community empowerment.

Furthermore, Mama Yustina as a weaving coach evaluates the results of the group and provides motivation to the participants to keep passionate following the training, as well as revealing the group atmosphere, group compactness, work results and effectiveness of the group following each stage of weaving. She appreciated the spirit of group work in completing every stage.  "I am very happy with the spirit of the participants learning to make woven cloth, although it is a little difficult and the participants often make mistakes but it does not make them stop learning. If you want to follow me to be a weaver, you have to keep up the spirit and follow every process that I teach so that you can master quickly," she said. Next, the participants were given the opportunity to share their experiences during the training. Mariance Danga (27 years old) said that it is the first time she knew and learned various stages in weaving.

After the evaluation and group consolidation, Mr. Nikodemus Makanggunggal, an assistant gospel teacher led the prayer together. This weaving group will continue to complete all stages, and now the group is preparing dyeing-yarn that has been tied to get coloring. Hopefully, the skills gained by the participants from this weaving group can help them to make production to improve the economy in the midst of pandemic situations. Let's fight the pandemic by being skilled and keep creative.***