Over the past several years, we have been working with the indigenous community in Kampung Orang Asli Serendah. Across multiple business ventures and working projects, we have manage to build a solid relationship with members that are keen to see the community thrive. Aligning our goals and vision was actually the easier part of the work, you see many of the community members in Kampung Orang Asli Serendah, as well as many other Orang Asli villages in the country, face systematic challenges when it comes to uplifting themselves.
Simple things that we rural folk tend to take for advantage – water and running electricity. These are utilities that are not consistently provided to the indigenous community. Even in the cases where these utilities are provided, we see cases of the indigenous members opting for other options that require less monetary commitment. Ultimately, this is an issue in regards to the community not wanting to fully urbanise as the Malay, Chinese, Indian, and other communities including many indigenous communities in the East Malaysia.
Thus, we face multiple challenges in setting up an indigenous business venture to market.
For example, our Sambal Bunga Kantan business venture has seen multiple capacity building investments. Getting Mak Banjir up to code with the right jabs and certifications for food handling, as well as ensuring their home is provided with water from AirSelangor. Then there is the equipment costs, we worked with the cooks to bottle and package the product. However, the nature of the community is such that there is no location where we can safely bottle the sambal with a high level of hygienic standards maintained. So we worked with a commercial kitchen in Petaling Jaya, we bring the sambal in our newly purchased food transporting trays, where the bottling is done safely.
There are many aspects of entrepreneurship in which our partners still need help with. The digital system for orders, marketing and content creation, financing, accounting, transportation, and taxation are all sectors which our partners do not know how to accomplish. Over time, we have slowly brought them up to speed, by allowing them to be our partners, they have invested their time and efforts to mimic what we’ve done and learn. Today we see improvements, so much so, that our community partners are able to handle face-to-face sales and accounting, have begun bank accounts inline with setting up their digital footprint, are able to promote the product, and are improving in reading and writing.
Ultimately, there’s much work to be done. The business is growing but not completed yet. If I were to be suddenly absent, the business will collapse. Thus, from a business standpoint of Community Ops – we must look towards catalyzing our capacity building and maintaining sustainability and growth. If you did take the time to read this, and are looking to help. You can reach out to us at – admin@communityops.org and we can take it from there.
Thank you. God Bless.