Women’s empowerment needs innovative financing: Lessons from the Women’s School initiative in Timor Tengah Selatan

Ratnasari
Landscape and Livelihood Gender Specialist
CIFOR-ICRAF Indonesia

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Since 2024, the Women’s Schools in several villages in Timor Tengah Selatan (TTS) District, East Nusa Tenggara, have been financed largely through self-funding. Innovative financing — particularly village funds — would support the continuity of this initiative.

The Women’s School (Sekolah Perempuan, or Sekoper), known locally as Skolbife, is a non-formal education initiative in TTS District that aims to strengthen women’s capacity and confidence so that they can make the most of their surrounding potential and development programmes. The programme was initiated by Reverend Seprianus Adonis in 2022 in Neke Village, and was later supported by CIFOR-ICRAF Indonesia through the Land4Lives action-research project, funded by the Government of Canada.

The women participants of Skolbife report many benefits, particularly increased self-confidence and skills in processing garden produce into marketable products. The success of Skolbife in Neke then inspired the Protestant Evangelical Church in Timor (GMIT) and the Office for Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection (DP3A) to replicate it in other villages across TTS. To date, 38 groups have been formed in 28 villages, and 26 Women’s School groups were recorded as active in 2025.

Most of these Skolbife groups are self-funded. Skolbife Nekmese Nakfumu, for example, runs its activities purely from the proceeds of processed-food and weaving enterprises.

The same is true of Skolbife Mnelalete, which relies solely on contributions from participants and facilitators. This high degree of self-reliance is evidence of a sense of ownership within the Women’s School.

However, self-funding alone is not enough; the running of the Women’s School must be supported by external funding. Such funding is intended only as a stimulus — not to make Sekoper dependent, since self-reliance is the basis of the Women’s School’s continuity — but rather to help the Women’s School realise its vision.

Some Sekoper groups that are part of church programmes receive funding from GMIT. For others, one potential source of financing to draw on is the village fund — because Sekoper are village-based.

In September 2024, a number of TTS Regional Government Agencies (OPD), sub-district heads and village heads signed a joint commitment — witnessed by CIFOR-ICRAF Indonesia — that the allocation of village funds would become one of the funding sources for Skolbife. In practice, however, it has not been easy to access these funds.

“We once applied to the village government but got nothing; the reason given was that there was no room for Women’s School activities within the village fund,” said Imelda, coordinator of Skolbife Kesetnana in South Mollo Sub-district.

Village fund allocations for the Women’s School

The Minister of Villages, Development of Disadvantaged Regions and Transmigration has designated women’s empowerment as one of the priorities for village funds. Regulation of the Minister of Villages (Permendesa PDTT) No. 2 of 2024 on Operational Guidelines for the Focus of Village Fund Use in 2025 lists the involvement of village women as one of the Village SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). Village governments can meet this goal by involving women in village deliberations and supporting women’s empowerment programmes.

Several Women’s School administrators have tried to propose Women’s School activities in village deliberations, but without success. In this failure, we identified one of the challenges of women’s empowerment at the village level: women’s participation in decision-making processes remains symbolic; that is, proposals from women are not yet given proportional consideration and budget.

In the author’s view, many village governments in TTS regard women’s empowerment as less of a priority than physical infrastructure development, which often dominates the village budget. In addition, they face limited human resources for managing, planning and accounting for village fund allocations.

Even so, there are some Women’s Schools that have successfully received village fund allocations. Skolbife Fetomone Bone, for instance, received a village fund of IDR 10 million for food-processing and weaving practice activities. Other examples include Skolbife Niki-niki Un, which received IDR 5 million in village funds for weaving practice, and Skolbife Imanuel Noebesa, which received IDR 2.5 million for yarn-dyeing practice.

Most village fund allocations for the Women’s School take the form of materials or the procurement of goods for productive enterprises — such as yarn for weaving or materials for food-processing practice — and do not yet cover the operational running of the Women’s School. Yet running a Women’s School requires learning materials, including stationery, participant refreshments, reimbursement of facilitators’ transport, and facilitator capacity strengthening.

Strengthening women’s position

For the Women’s School to be able to access village funds, women’s position in the budget-planning process needs to be strengthened. Women must have a say in decision-making and ensure that village fund allocations are genuinely integrated with women’s needs.

On the other hand, village officials need to understand women’s empowerment programmes as strategic activities in village development. They also need to become more capable of managing village funds and more accountable in reporting them. On this matter, the central government, local governments and partner institutions can collaborate to strengthen the capacity of village officials.

The Women’s School can also collaborate with local governments and partners to raise funding beyond the village fund — for example, by promoting the products of group enterprises, connecting with donors, and broadening support for the initiative through social media.

However small the effort made, it will mean a great deal to the Women’s School in nurturing independent, principled leaders who champion gender equality and justice and who are friendly to nature and culture.

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Originally published in Indonesian as “Pemberdayaan perempuan butuh pendanaan inovatif: Pelajaran dari inisiatif Sekolah Perempuan di Timor Tengah Selatan” on kiprahagroforestri.id