"The goal is to make them graduate (so they no longer need) social assistance," Secretary General of the Ministry of Social Affairs Robben Rico said in a ministry statement issued here on Wednesday.
"After the 'graduation,' we invite other ministries/agencies to collaborate in empowerment programs," he added.
He conveyed this during a coordination meeting held in Jakarta on Tuesday to discuss the implementation of community empowerment programs for the 2025 fiscal year.
On that occasion, Rico invited all ministries/agencies under the Coordinating Ministry for Community Empowerment to strengthen synergy and collaboration to expand community empowerment programs from the upstream to the downstream level.
He also called for developing a pilot project whose benefits can be directly felt by the community.
"I hope that we can work together to establish synergy so that every ministry and agency can create a collaborative project together," he said.
According to him, the relevant ministries and agencies have many intersecting programs, so by strengthening collaboration with each other, the problem of extreme poverty is expected to be resolved.
He added that the Social Affairs Ministry is focusing on lifelong protection as its main program. To realize this, his side has not only initiated social assistance and rehabilitation programs, but also empowerment programs.
Therefore, Rico invited other ministries and agencies to work together to increase the number of people who can exit poverty.
Meanwhile, the ministry's director general of social empowerment, Mira Riyati Kurniasih, explained that collaboration between ministries and agencies is needed to keep the economic wheels of the community churning and keep people from falling back into poverty again.
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Translator: Lintang P, Kenzu
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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