In rural Indonesia, many communities living in poverty lack the resources, opportunities and support to provide for their families. Opportunity International Australia’s model of small loans to help women start a business is even out of reach for these communities.

However, Opportunity’s local partner, TLM Foundation, has found a solution to help those communities - the Resilient Villages program.

The Resilient Villages program identifies villages in remote Indonesia and sees the potential in creating economic empowerment as well as improving health and living conditions for the participants. Things they look for include high levels of poverty and poor infrastructure, but with great leadership and the ability and willingness of the participants to learn, invest and take part in the program.

In Indonesia, 41 per cent of people live in villages, and there are almost 84,000 villages,” says Pak Rozali, Chief Executive Officer of TLM Foundation. “If you want to change Indonesia, you need to start with the villages.”

One of the villages taking part in the program is in So’e, a mountainous remote part of West Timor, a few hours north of Kupang.

There are four families in the village, a beautiful tight-knit community helping each other and working together to provide for their families. Their living conditions are simple. Basic woodfire stoves are used for cooking and families live in tiny dwellings, built with palm fronds and sticks.

Before the Resilient Villages program, the men and women in the small village were only able to work as labourers on rice farms nearby. The village is so remote that there just aren’t many options for employment.

With the help of the program though, the community were given vegetable seeds, organic fertiliser, farming equipment like hoses and shovels, and they started their own vegetable farm.

They are given training on how to run the farm, including what vegetables to plant, best time to harvest and how to take care of their crops.

They are growing cabbage, Chinese mustard, cucumber, spinach, tomato, kurus (a local vegetable), bitter melon and buk choy.

TLM Foundation run a chicken farm nearby, selling eggs to local markets, and all profits are put back into Resilient Villages. They give the chicken manure to all the participants in the program for free to use in their organic vegetable farms.

Adriana is one of the women in the village. She is married to Osias and they have two children, four-year-old daughter Asri and baby son Fernando.

Adriana was pregnant with Fernando at age 41, and was considered a high-risk pregnancy. Before her community joined Resilient Villages, they could not access nutritious food easily and at a check-up with her doctor, Adriana was recognised as being malnourished.

As part of the program, along with planting healthy vegetables on their farm, Adriana was given four egg-laying chickens, providing much-needed protein for her and the family.

The community attended nutrition training as well, to learn about what foods are important to nourish and fuel their bodies, and the importance of a healthy balance of vegetables, protein and rice.

“In the end, when I gave birth, the delivery was normal and healthy,” said Adriana.

The village community has been collectively able to increase their income, growing harvesting and selling any surplus of crops to the local market.

First and foremost, they grow food for their own families, but with good weather conditions and plenty of sun and rain in this part of Indonesia, they are able to harvest extra vegetables for sale.

Now that the vegetable farm is starting to generate an income, the village community has bigger dreams. They all want their children to go to school and have a better life than what they have.

When asked what her dreams for the children in the village were, one of the women Yuliana answered, “I want my daughter to go to high school. To have a better life than this.”

If you would like to support our work including the Resilient Villages program, please donate to Opportunity’s 2025 Christmas appeal.