Working Life

I am a fish out of water.

At Randstad (or any other company) I would have a pretty good idea of what to do or at least how to get started, even if it is as mundane as reading an operations manual. Here, it seems, everything I know about work is not necessarily wrong, but certainly different. It’s very difficult to get started here, not only because of the language barrier, but the huge cultural barriers that exist as well. There are two giant chasms that have to be bridged in order to help Interaksi build its Formal Employment Program.

One is fairly obvious – Western Culture compared to Indonesian Culture. Things are slower here, and that’s not necessarily wrong, but I do need to learn to adapt, and ironically, I need to learn to adapt quickly! There is much more formality with respect to how business is conducted, with a healthy amount of respect for hierarchy and rank. Meetings are drawn out, formal affairs with openings and closings, usually some kind of ‘official’ making a speech, and a lot of pomp & ceremony. Unfortunately so far I have seen very little accomplished in these meetings. And let’s face it; it’s not Indonesian culture that will have to change, but mine, in order to make things work.

The second giant challenge is ‘Business Culture’ compared to ‘NGO culture.’ Someone summed it up for me last week very nicely: A month in business is 28 days of working and 2 days of meetings; a month in an NGO is 2 days of working and 28 days of meetings. It’s all talk here. People have great ideas and the best of intentions, to be sure; unfortunately they either take so long to implement they no longer make sense, or they don’t get implemented at all.

When I was in Canada thinking about this placement I made all kinds of assumptions about what I would be facing and came up with a few preliminary ideas. For example, I assumed that a good place to start to find employment for people with disabilities (or PWD’s, which is a commonly used acronym here, though for some reason it would make me uncomfortable at home) would be in western-based companies with vibrant Corporate Social Responsibility policies, and major hotels that cater to western clients who are accustomed to seeing PWD’s at work. When I arrived in Indonesia, they were way ahead of me. We have an agreement with a major Solo hotel to bring in 6 PWD’s on 6-month rotating paid internships. There are 5 PWD’s working at Solo’s largest furniture manufacturer and 3 at another, both western-owned. There is huge potential to employ PWD’s in Java’s robust and interesting handicrafts industry, along with textiles and the batik industry, which is centred here.

No it seems that we do not have a demand problem as there are plenty of employers willing to hire PWD’s (at least plenty of western-owned or run companies) but rather a supply problem as there are too few PWD’s who are ready and able to work. This is the opposite of what I had assumed and expected.

Many PWD’s in Indonesia have no education as they have never attended school. Their parents are often over-protective, or worse, ashamed, so they hide their children away to keep their shame hidden. Many believe that their children’s disability is some kind of punishment for past sins of sins of their ancestors. One individual, who was lucky enough to be university-educated, knows that he contracted polio, which is a virus (indiscriminate as to who it will infect) and this resulted in his loss of full function in his legs. However, his mother is convinced that her son’s disability is a direct result of the fact that she killed a cat when she was pregnant with him. This highly-educated individual knows his disability is a result of the polio virus, but he says, with perfect seriousness, that his mother makes a good point and her sin could also be the cause.

Often when disabled people do decide they want to work, the parents convince them otherwise and will remove them from programs designed to assist them. PWD’s are told their entire lives that they are not good enough, that they need to be cared for, that they are incapable. Indonesian culture dictates that you must respect your elders, parents are the ultimate authority, and questioning them is forbidden. So the parents’ influence is total and if they say no, it takes a very strong individual to defy them, even if this individual is an adult. The ones that do defy their parents, or better yet, have supportive parents, are often unskilled, uneducated, or ill-prepared for the world of work.

To make matters worse, there are criminal elements, not unlike mafia, that prey on disabled people. They provide them with food and shelter, but then require them to beg on street corners and major intersections for money. All of the money (not a percentage, all of it) is turned over in exchange for the lodging and for the privilege of begging. Once someone is trapped in this system it is nearly impossible for them to escape as the criminals would not only take away their homes and only means of support, but also threaten their families.

These are the challenges faced by Interaksi in assisting PWD’s to gain meaningful, equal employment. Everything I assumed before I came here is wrong, and the challenges are daunting. Luckily, like I said, they are way ahead of where I expected them to be. PWD’s are indeed working and we have some amazing success stories, like the 14 people already out working, one of whom was recently married and is expecting his first child. He was one of the people that had been hidden away, and now he credits his job alone for his new-found self-esteem, his new wife, and growing family.

At InterAksi, we are pushing ahead, and working on strengthening the organization’s ability to facilitate formal employment for PWD’s. We are developing a database of candidates and of potential employers. We are working on a soft-skill training workshop to assist PWD’s in the initial job-seeking period (for things like CV-writing, interview techniques, and ‘selling yourself’). We are also planning a peer-to-peer workshop to demonstrate success stories to both PWD’s and to their parents. Hopefully, with learning, with time, with hard work, and yes, with a little luck, these success stories will become more common.