Young People Learn the Potency and Village Development: Health Problem

By Petrus Maure, S.Kom.          

Multiplication of Stube HEMAT in Alor held a two-days camp at TSAP Sebanjar to find out and understand the village's potencies (4-5/11/2022). The activity discussed three materials, namely: 1) Mapping Village Potencies in Alor, 2) Mapping potencies with an Asset-Based Community Development approach, and 3) Mapping the potencies of a marine-based sustainable village.

The village assistant expert for Alor regency, Makris Mau, became the resource person on the first day by describing the welfare conditions of the residents in Alor regency, "There are still 1-5 family heads who are categorized as poor in one village. It affects the growth of village human resources. There are two types of poverty, namely cultural poverty and structural poverty. Structural poverty occurs due to government development policies that are not pro to the community. While cultural poverty refers to poverty that is inherited by family life for generations. He conveyed further, "We may be poor in wealth, but we cannot be poor in performance."

Poor performance is a matter of poor way of thinking, work ethic, communication, responsibility, and cooperation. Talking about village issues, the focus is on how to equalize access for education and health. We need to consider the situation in Alor that many health workers are not willing to work in the villages. Consequently, the government is unable to provide formal work, and many of them become training staff at hospitals and health centers with low salaries, around Rp 200.000 per month.

The resource person shared his experience when he went to one hospital in Alor, one patient could be handled by six health workers due to a surplus of health workers. The low degree of public health potentially contributes to a low human development index. He invited students to think beyond the texts in campus because studying the surrounding social facts is important too.

Stube HEMAT activities through discussion are crucial to hone students' critical power. Sharpening knowledge with textbooks is important, but testing sensitivity in society is more important because not everyone cares about community life in a village.***