Piloting Kongsi app for mangrove rehabilitation projects

Managing community-based mangrove rehabilitation projects (CBMR) made easy using Kongsi-core, community organizer app.

KONGSI CORE is a community organizer application. It can be applied for Community Based Mangrove Rehabilitation projects (CBMR). CBMR is involving community at all stage project development; planning, budget, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Community gather together, forming group, sharing responsibility and role to solve their own environment problems. CBMR approach has been proven producing positive outcomes both for low income fishermen gaining a better livelihood and coastal protection. But CBMR implementation falls short of technological support. KONGSI CORE is built to solve problems in three parties:

• Coastal Communities in needs; they may raise due to poverty or disaster that cause environmental damage in coastal area. They are suffering due to lack of resources and external support for recovery.  
• Supporting agencies; they are may be volunteers, donors, NGOs, corporates who willing to support communities in needs.  They have limited information on where coastal communities in needs to be supported and what aid should be delivered first.
• Governments; local and central governments to regulate and make policy in mangrove require a big data but it is not exists yet.  

KONGSI CORE is offering solution for CBMR to be more well managed by connecting stakeholders in one platform so that:

• Communites in needs have a better access to external resources and they can manage mangrove project activities on mobile technology.
• Supporting communities will have more data for better aid management in mangrove rehabilition and be able to monitor projects on the go. Also they can share their experience directly to targeted communities in a efficient way.
•  Governments can coordinate aid in seamless way and will have a big data on mangrove projects for better policy making.

As an productivity application; KONGSI CORE has advantage features for improving productivity in activity and team management, project progress monitoring, funding and expense tracking.

Adopting KONGSI CORE for CBMR is expected to lead to immediate impacts such as a better governance in mangrove rehabilitation and a better quality of work life of coastal communities in term of access to external support, more time with family,  more livelihoods, fresh air availability, and feel comfort due to around in protected environment. Further impact analysis could be done as much as data collected in the system.

Why should piloting KONGSI in Indonesia? Indonesia has the largest mangrove forest in the world, but 52% of it  or about 1.8 Million hectare is damaged.  Damaged mangrove causes sizeable loss national economics, at least USD 1.6 Billion of fishery sector only. Restoring them in a better govenance using KONGSI should be considered.

To date, We have good relationship with communities, NGOs, Academia and local and cental governments work for Mangrove in North Sumatera and Indonesia. We are improving UI/UX and offline version so more coastal communities can adopt KONGSI. 

Looking forward to collaborating with you for better coastal communities and environment protection.

KONGSI CORE – Collaboration made easy

Kongsi-CORE, community organizer application is a new application. It is enabling community to manage social work projects in a more simple way.  Transforming community driven development projects to application is an innovative way. In many developing countries, CBMR is implemented in a traditional way including those projects supported by international agencies. 

Kongsi CORE put all stakeholders; community in needs, volunteer with expertise, donors/NGOs/corporate with  funding, governments with the authorities  to share ideas, utilize resources and coordinate actions for CBMR in one platform so the effort  will be well documented and measured. 

Many community group in developing countries are aware of the advance of the technology. They use mobile hand phone with  installed Facebook, Whats'up and many more. Their children are more advance with more applications installed. They are learning from their own children. They need  technology such an application that specifically support their activities in implementing social projects. KONGSI CORE is a technology to answer this challenge. Using KONGSI-CORE application for the poor fishermen, those who will apply KONGSI-CORE in this piloting proposal, means closing the gap between them to the technology advancement. 

1. Mentoring communities groups in using KONGSI-CORE for their mangrove rehabilitation projects. Select community champions to be the trainers to respective communities. 

2. Develop KONGSI-CORE to be more friendly, better UI/UX, and more required features for targeted communities; fishermen, environment activist and community groups working for coastal protections. 

3. Supporting community for sharing experience in using app KONGSI-CORE, so other communities in more countries may adopt KONGSI-CORE.

4. Develop KONGSI-CORE with more language; English and other local language in Asia Pacific. 

5. Visiting communities in targeted countries to train and share success story of using KONGSI-CORE.     

KONGSI to be the first choice for community in improving productivity and collaboration.  Measurable impact indicators are proposed:

1. Coastal communities have better quality of work life in term of: easy access to external resources, fast sharing and learning experience, seamless coordinated action, more time with family, more income generation available, and comfortable of being protected by restored mangrove. 

2. Local and central governments get a data driven policy making for mangrove/coastal protection. A better budget and land ownership allocation.

3. Volunteers, Donors, NGOs, and Corporate have more option available for targeting coastal communities in needs. Effective aid delivery.   

1. Select community leader/champion to be the first users. Then, to facilitate them to involve members in using KONGSI. 

2. Improve UI/UX, features and sub applications. 

3. Promote successful users in applying app KONGSI through wider media and social media. Good relations with medias, bloggers, social media influences.  

Currently 100+ installed.  According to users,  KONGSI provides transparent financial information on social projects and structured reports for community social action projects. They can tract progress of their social projects quickly in a systematic way.

KONGSI CORE was introduced  from communities to communities in local through personal approach via what'sup, news publication on local media and visit to community group leaders. To deliver  on how to use KONGSI, manual general guide and thematic guide were provided. Given our technical progress and limited resources, a massive community engagement approach is still being developed.

Expected to be 5.000 in 12 months.  To serve them, KONGSI is providing tutorials. But the most effective way is to visit them to provide a short training introduction of KONGSI to community champions. These champions then attain more users. It is expected to be 500.000-600.000 users in 3 years. 

More expert in:

1. UI/UX.

2. Back end programming and network administration.

3. Artificial intelligence (AI). 

4. Community engagement and facilitators. 

5. Funding management.

Revenue model

1. Activation fee; users pay fee per activation of social project they are going to manage.  

2. Partnership; corporate users pay by terms to facilitate their corporate social responsibility by KONGSI. 

3. Advertising; for those users in trial period.

KONGSI is creating a new market of applications; community organizer app market which currently not many players in. KONGSI is developing this market for business sustainability. 

For introducing KONGSI and build relationship with those who shared vision on environment protection and social development. I believe it because Solve has resources and network to support make KONGSI dream come true.

1. Communities behaviors. For some, adopting a new technology is a risky instead of benefit. To solve this visit with them, initially by their leaders, to convince technology is a opportunity and benefit.

2. Willingness to learn. For some, learning a new technology is taking time and destroy comfort. Supported by most friendly UI/UX,  training and mentoring to them is required.