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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 1

Publication Date: January 25, 2022

DOI:10.14738/assrj.91.11556. Wardhono, H., Sayidah, N., & Marwiyah, S. (2022). Analysis of Community Empowerment Strategies for Coastal Community Power

in Indonesia Marine School Program. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(1). 290-302.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Analysis of Community Empowerment Strategies for Coastal

Community Power in Indonesia Marine School Program

Hendro Wardhono

Faculty of Administration, Dr. Soetomo University

Surabaya, Indonesia

Nur Sayidah

Faculty of Economics and Business

Dr. Soetomo University, Surabaya, Indonesia

Siti Marwiyah

Faculty of Law, Dr. Soetomo University, Surabaya, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

The activities of community empowerment through marine schools realize the

power of coastal communities. Power refers to two keywords, namely surviving and

rising again. When a person and society is in a disaster-affected area, they can plan,

organize, and implement the stages of rescue. This ability is beneficial both for

themselves and or their community. They can avoid disasters that occur and can

generally live again. The implementation of the marine school program has opened

a discourse and a spectrum of thought that provides space for community

empowerment activities in coastal areas. Improvement of program performance

and sustainability is essential to be studied. The paper analyzes community

empowerment strategies based on enabling, empowering, and protecting activities.

The implementation of these activities pays close attention to the locality in the

community, including local issues, local autonomy, and local accountability.

Keywords: Community Empowerment, Enabling, Empowering dan Protecting

INTRODUCTION

Indonesia is one of the countries familiar with disasters. Areas that were once known to be safe

or rarely occur in disasters are ultimately affected by disasters with significant damage and

losses. Data between 2002-2017 shows that the number of disaster events from year to year

always increases, and almost 80% of them are hydro-meteorological disasters such as floods,

droughts, forest fires, landslides, and tidal waves. The trend of increasing hydro-meteorological

disasters will increase along with global climate change.The economic losses caused by these

disasters are also increasing, primarily due to floods and forest fires. Nationally, there are 2

(two) main issues regarding disaster management. First, inadequate performance of disaster

management is related to limited capacity in the implementation of emergency response and

rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts in post-disaster areas. Second, low awareness of

disaster risk and understanding of disaster preparedness, including low awareness of disaster

risk reduction efforts and preparedness in dealing with disasters.

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Wardhono, H., Sayidah, N., & Marwiyah, S. (2022). Analysis of Community Empowerment Strategies for Coastal Community Power in Indonesia

Marine School Program. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(1). 290-302.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.91.11556

In the perspective of disaster risk reduction, community-based community movements

characters are usually 'dynamic and uniform, small-scale, and from the culture and local

wisdom. However, with the spirit of culture and local knowledge, this excellent and traditional

understanding of human-nature interactions brings more sustainable impacts. It directly solves

disaster and environmental problems at the local/community level. The movement pattern I

based on spiritual motivation leads to a spirit of togetherness, which is a social learning

process that encourages disaster risk reduction movements at the local/community level.

Furthermore, based on the ontology of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Movement, which

aims to create a community that can manage and reduce disaster risk and improve the quality

of life in 2016, BNPB facilitated the implementation of the River School through the formation

of river communities and apples and clean-up actions. Rivers in 23 regencies/cities in Indonesia

were followed by the Mountain School and the Marine School in 2017. The basic assumption

is ecosystem-based thinking and refers to the understanding that sustainable watershed

management is one of the ideal models—this model distinguishing actions upstream,

midstream, and downstream. Substantively the meaning of the NMDRR in the River, Mountain,

and Marine School program is a community empowerment process that focuses on

participatory activities in conducting studies, planning, organizing, and taking actions that

involve various stakeholders in tackling disasters before, during, and after a disaster occurs.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Community Empowerment

The failure of community empowerment programs so far tends to be caused by not considering

the needs from the community point of view. Many institutions have difficulty understanding

the social conditions of a society. Understanding the reality of a community is not as easy as

turning the hand. Often the facilitators of community empowerment are trapped in their

imaginations and thoughts. So that they unconsciously guide the people. They will assist

according to what they (the facilitators) think, not what the community thinks. In the 'language

of empowerment', the learning activities must start with people know and start with people

have.

Some views on community empowerment are as follows (Ife, 1996): (i) structural,

empowerment is an effort to liberate, fundamentally structural transformation, and elimination

of oppressive structural or system; (ii) pluralism, empowerment as an effort to increase the

power of a person or group of people to be able to compete with other groups in a specific rule

of the game ; (iii) elitism, empowerment as an effort to influence elites, form alliances with

these elites and try to make changes to elitist practices and structures; and (iv) post- structuralist, empowerment is an effort to change the discourse and respect subjectivity in

understanding social reality.

The essence of empowerment is humanity. In other words, humans, and society as normative,

structural, and substantial benchmarks. Social values is the basis to develop economic in

community empowerment. This concept is community-centered, participatory, and sustainable

(Chambers, 1995). This concept is broader than merely meeting basic needs or providing a

mechanism to prevent further impoverishment processes (safety net), which has recently been

an alternative concept of past growth.