Kalyanamitra is established as a critical response to the inequality and lack of gender sensitivity and awareness in the family, society and state because of the destruction of ideology and women’s movements in Indonesian during the New Order regime. Kalyanamitra was established on 28 March 1985 in Jakarta by Ratna Saptari, Sita Aripurnami, Myra Diarsi, Debra Yatim and Syarifah Sabaroeddin. Kalyanamitra is an independent non-governmental women’s organization.
Initially Kalyanamitra focused on managing data related to women issues in different aspects. Then, the data was discussed in forums, seminars, through critical education, public dialogues, publications and working networks.
Kalyanamitra was maturing into resource center. Now in 2013-2015, Kalyanamitra focuses more on community facilitation, development study and organization development.
In executing its vision and mission, Kalyanamitra always highly upholds the following values:
- Taking side to marginal, weak, poor and oppressed women;
- Anti-discrimination (do not discriminate people based on race, ethnicity, religion and gender);
- Anti-violence (No toleration of any kind of violence or taking the sides of violators. No toleration of any kind of violence that is committed in within an organization, faciliated group, network or state in general)
- Democractic (Involving all elements in organization and facilitated group in managing program (planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, involving all elements in organization and facilitated group in decision making.
- Gender justice (Giving equal treatment on men and women. Equal access and control for women and men in decision making and using resources);
- Transparency (The process of managing organization is conducted openly. The organization regularly gives information about its works to public);
- Voluntarism (Sensitive and concerned about the surrounding and ready to help others);
- Independence (Free from influence of political interests, investment, government and political party in decision making);
- Accountability (Responsible for any efforts that are conducted to the community and public);
- Equality (All people have equal rights).
Vision and Mission
The external vision of Kalyanamitra is to generate an egalitarian community through collaboration with social actors in the community in order to fulfil women’s rights. The internal vision is to make Kalyanamitra a competent organization to process knowledge based on women learning.
Kalyanamitra’s mission includes
- Strengthening the facilitated community to become social actors in their area by providing and disseminating information and knowledge and critical education;
- Making basic studies based on facilitated community to become recommendations in policy change;
- Improving public awareness on gender injustice issues;
- Developing network with social actors in different level in supporting Kalyanamitra’s works;
- Improving competence of Kalyanamitra resources to generate knowledge based on the study of women.
Learn more about Kalyanamitra through their website.
