Edi Petebang , Contributor , Pontianak
|The Jakarta Post , ed, 12/02/2009 11:05 AM | People
Ask him about credit unions, and Anselmus Robertus Mecer's face will break into a beaming smile.
Since 1982, the man has dedicated his life to developing credit unions, cooperative units that provides loans and other services to their members.
The 65-year-old could not help but feel proud, as he is finally reaping the benefits of years of hard work.
Until the middle of this year, he has helped set up and developed 58 cooperative units across the country, from Papua to Batam on the Riau Islands province. Overall, his credit unions include 547,965 members with total assets of Rp 3.6 trillion.
His success made him popular among the union's members, earning him the nickname of the "walking credit union".
The secret of his success lies in his ability to create financial products suited to the needs of locals, their lifestyle and philosophy of life.
The four activities – engrained in locals' everyday life – he decided to use as founding blocks for his products consist of religious rituals, daily consumption, providing seeds for farming activities and social activities.
"Whether they aware of it or not, the four activities are their road to safety," said the father of six.
The resulting products include loans for old times (ritual), loans for daily activities (consumption), loans for investment (providing the seeds) and social loans, such as for healthcare and burial purposes.
The product names are then customized to match the characteristics of particular members. For example, financial products for unions whose members come from Dayak tribes are given Dayak names. The same goes for other products. Mecer's strategy has helped develop credit unions in Kalimantan faster than in any other island. According to data from the Inkopdit, the national umbrella organization for credit cooperatives, Kalimantan's unions ranked first to third in terms of number of members and asset value, out of 187 credit unions surveyed in September.
The biggest is Pancur Kasih credit union in Pontianak with 72,906 members and assets worth Rp 619 billion. The second was Lantang Tipo union, with 80,858 members and Rp 610 billion in assets; and the third place went to Keling Kumang with 59,783 members and Rp 271 billion in assets.
The success of credit unions in Kalimantan has brought many visitors to the island, local or from Malaysia, The Philippines and Vietnam, eager to set up their own cooperatives at home. Mecer then helps them with creating their own credit unions until they can run them independently.
Mecer's system has helped create credit unions designed on the same model in Papua, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Java and all over Kalimantan, but he has yet to help individuals from overseas.
"I have received requests to help establish several units in neighboring countries but due to limited resources, I have not been able to fulfill these requests," said the former high school teacher and lecturer at Tanjungpura University in Pontianak.
Credit unions established in West Kalimantan have not only boosted the economy but following the 1997 ethnic clashes, they also helped promote peace and reconciliation.
"We realize that within the credit unions, we blend in regardless of religion, race or status. Our basic principle is democracy, solidarity and no discrimination."
The union's work made the Brussel-based Coopération Internationale pour le Developpement et la Solidarité (CIDSE) select Mecer in 2007 as one of 17 people in Asia who dedicated their lives to promoting peace.
Mecer said many people initially held prejudices against credit unions, mistakenly believing they belonged to Christians who were using them to convert people to Christianity.
He said the prejudice was understandable since credit unions were first introduced in the country by Catholic priest Albrecth Karim Arbei SJ in 1967, and brought to Kalimantan by Dayak people who were also Catholics.
"But credit unions are absolutely not connected to any religion or ethnic group. Do we ever get asked about what religion our money is associated to, when we go shopping to the market?" he said at his home.
In Kalimantan's villages, especially in West Kalimantan, banks are losing ground to credit unions, he added.
He said most people preferred credit unions because they put people, not profits, first, like most banks, and they also provided training for members.
"The credit union's philosophy is to help ourselves through cooperation, solidarity, trust, learning, independently… The principle behind a credit union is that money is just a means but the most important thing is the people…," said the former member of the West Kalimantan Legislative Council and former representative of Kalimantan's Dayak minority ethnic group at the People's Consultative Assembly.
Born and raised in a simple family in Kepatang regency, West Kalimantan, Mecer left his hometown after graduating from elementary school to attend a high school in Singkawang.
After finishing his bachelor's degree at Bandung's Teachers Training Institute in 1978, he became a lecturer at Tanjungpura University while teaching at several high schools.
Since his university days, he and several of his friends were already concerned about the rampant poverty among tribal communities, which they agreed resulted from poor education.
In 1982, he set up the Pancur Kasih social work foundation, which manages junior and senior high schools in 1982 and then founded Pancur Kasih credit union in 1987.
"The founders and members were teachers. We initially only invested thousands of rupiah, and many people laughed at us," recalled Mecer, who is now chairman of the Kalimantan Credit Union Coordination Board, the main credit union organization in Kalimantan.
Between his time as a lecturer and teacher, Mecer and his colleagues continued developing credit unions in villages.
After all these years, he still tirelessly promotes credit unions.
"The biggest failure of government-sponsored cooperatives is that the government is never really involved, standing on the sidelines merely supervising, so it's not responsible for the organization's life or death," he said.
Although the credit unions he helped developed have improved people's wellbeing, Mecer still has another hope.
"I'm sure that if 50 percent of people in West Kalimantan and in Indonesia become credit union members, the number of poor people will decrease. This is the biggest contribution credit unions can make to the nation."****
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