What is Musrenbang? Cocoa Life Indonesia and the best community development approach you’ve never heard of

Since Cocoa Life Indonesia was founded in 2013, I’ve seen the program grow and develop, truly shaping the future of cocoa for generations to come. Today, we’re proud to be on the ground, working in hand in hand with around 40,000 farmers in more than 330 Cocoa Life registered cocoa-growing communities.

But whenever I’m asked about the secret to our success and why our community members feel so empowered to drive their own development, I make sure to tell them about Musrenbang.

Musrenbang is an inclusive, participatory, and accessible approach to community discussions where all community members, but especially women, are invited and empowered to participate, voice their opinions, and influence decision-making and fund distribution. It was first introduced by the Indonesian government to strengthen its development initiatives, and ensure they met communities’ needs. The discussions follow a tiered approach, starting with individual contributions, then moving up to local, regional, and national levels.

At Cocoa Life, we believe a sustainable cocoa supply begins with empowered cocoa farmers and Musrenbang is the key to unlocking this. So, we worked with public and private partners to incorporate it into our program, and we’ve found that engaging the full community on this approach has enabled us to make a far greater impact on community development.

Better community representation means initiatives are more likely to receiving funding to build the kind of communities they want to live in and create new income-generating opportunities – because no one knows this better than the people themselves.

To give community members the confidence to identify development opportunities and propose solutions, we run training programs on public speaking, proposal writing, child protection and female leadership. We do this together with our local partners, who are critical to our success. We also run trainings on the concepts of Community Action Planning and Musrenbang, so that every community member has the tools and understanding to push for change.

Through Musrenbang, community members are creating real, positive change in their communities, in a way that can be sustained for generations to come.

I’ve written a paper exploring this unique approach in more detail, outlining how we integrated it into our program, how the right partnerships helped make it a success, and what we’ve learned along the way. It includes some inspiring case studies from women we’ve worked with: Sinar, Tintin and Imasse.

“Since joining the Cocoa Life program, I have realized that my role in representing women’s perspectives and concerns in my village area is important. I have more power now to influence village and committee leaders to include women’s and children’s needs in our plans.” - Sinar, cocoa farmer and village group leader from Goarie village in Indonesia’s Soppeng District

I hope that by reading it, partners, peers and other sustainability and development actors are inspired from the Musrenbang model and can gain insights on how to pursue public-private partnerships to catalyze their impact on the ground.

Read the full paper here.