Jakarta – Recognizing that dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic requires a collective effort, the Jakarta provincial administration launched in April the Large-Scale Social Collaboration (KSBB) program, an initiative to help vulnerable communities affected by the health crisis.
Head of Jakarta Smart City, Yudhistira Nugraha, said that restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic did not mean that people could not help each other.
"Therefore, the Jakarta provincial administration invites residents to collaborate together to help vulnerable communities affected by COVID-19 through the KSBB program," he said on Friday as quoted by tribunnews.com.
Under the program, the Jakarta administration acts as a facilitator in providing assistance through "collaborators". The assistance is given to people in need, including those at community units (RWs), Islamic boarding schools, orphanages, nursing homes, homes for those with disabilities, and micro, small and medium enterprises.
Incoming assistance is collected and distributed openly.
"Maintaining the transparency of aid, residents can look up the summary of data on collaborators and distribution for KSBB program assistance through the 'collaboration menu' on the corona.jakarta.go.id site, the official site for COVID-19 handling, managed by the Jakarta administration," he said.
Yudhistira explained that, via the menu, users could access map-based information on social assistance for prospective collaborators looking to participate in the program.
Visitors to the site can also find maps of locations that need social assistance, participate in donating to certain locations, and access information about ongoing collaborations.
"Currently, there are 120 collaborators who have distributed assistance to 581 [locations where] people are affected by COVID-19, including RWs, Islamic boarding schools, orphanages, homes for disabilities and nursing homes in Jakarta," he said.
Furthermore, Yudhistira said, there were two types of assistance: KSBB Pangan for food assistance and KSBB UMKM.
KSBB Pangan is a collaborative program that sends assistance from collaborators or donors to vulnerable communities affected by COVID-19 in the form of food packages, Lebaran packages and THR packages. When the program was launched, it coincided with the month of Ramadan.
KSBB UMKM is a collaborative program under the Jakarta provincial administration. It uses community and business entities to revive the economy, with assistance coming in the form of capital loan packages and training packages.
"In the future, there will be other types of KSBB. Currently it is being developed by the relevant regional apparatus in the Jakarta administration," Yudhistira said.
According to him, the advantage of the KSBB is transparency, as there are complete reports of the program's activities. As a result, collaborators can directly supervise the entire process, from providing direct assistance to communities and selecting locations to receive assistance, to determining the type of aid.
Head of the Jakarta Provincial Regional Cooperation Bureau, Andhika, said that the Jakarta administration hoped that more and more people would be motivated to use the platform.
"We hope that the community can take advantage of the existing KSBB facilities to help others, so we can end the COVID-19 pandemic together with a stronger sense of brotherhood," he said. (iwa)