The Kindness of Indonesian Society - Part 1
Author: Jalal
Founder and Commissioner
WISESA Social Enterprise
In 2018 a Gallup survey entitled The World's Most Generous Countries placed Indonesia in the highest rank. The survey was conducted in 146 countries around the world to answer three questions, namely whether in the past month citizens of a country (1) donated money to social institutions, (2) donated social work time to certain organizations, and (3) helped strangers. who is in need of help?
Indonesians get a score of 59 on a scale of 100, the same as Australia. New Zealand and the United States got a score of 58, while Ireland followed in the next position with a score of 56. After the top 5, the countries that followed below were the United Kingdom (55), Singapore, Kenya and Myanmar (54), then Bahrain ( 53). This study confirms that the Indonesian people are indeed a generous nation.
Another study, at the end of 2019, the CAF World Giving Index, conducted by the Charities Aid Foundation also placed Indonesian citizens in a place of honor. In contrast to the Gallup study which 'only' revealed the results of questions to 1,000 adults in each country, this CAF study used aggregated data from Gallup's research over 10 years. With that aggregation, the data presented by CAF comes from 1.3 million people consistently taken in 128 countries.
With such a methodology, Indonesia does not rank the highest, but is ranked 10th with a score of 50 on a scale of 100. The United States is the leader with a score of 58, followed by Myanmar with the same score, New Zealand (57), Australia and Ireland (56). , Canada (55), the United Kingdom (54), the Netherlands (53), and Sri Lanka (51), and after that only Indonesia.
However, this time series research provides special notes for Indonesia, namely as the country with the fastest growth in goodness in the world for the last 10 years. Indonesians only got a score of 36 in 2010, increasing to 60 in 2017, then slightly decreased to 59 in 2018. This puts Indonesia in first place on the list of biggest risers, followed by Kenya, Singapore, Malaysia, Iraq, South Africa, Haiti. , Rwanda, Boznia and Herzegovina, and the United Arab Emirates. This means that five of the 10 countries with the fastest growth in the goodness of their citizens are in Asia.
Recent research conducted by the Center for Asian Philanthropy and Society (CAPS) provides a deeper picture of what can be done on the Asian continent to optimize the contribution of its citizens in improving shared prosperity. On 7 September 2020, CAPS founder and chief executive, Ruth Shapiro, and CAPS research director, Mehvesh Mumtaz Ahmed were pleased to give a presentation on the research results whose full title is Doing Good Index 2020 - Profiling Asia's Social Sectors: The Path Forward . Indonesia is the focus of the dissemination.
What were the most prominent results from the collaboratively held discussions with CCPHI, Indonesian Philanthropy and Dompet Dhuafa? There are so many interesting ones. Of course, what is important to remember is the context that the social sector in Asia—similar to what countries around the world are facing—is facing a COVID-19 outbreak. In such a situation, the social sector is certainly not only expected to play a role in providing services to the community as usual. They are also expected and are directly involved in providing food assistance, providing health assistance, providing loan and grant assistance, and providing support to government initiatives.
CAPS calculates that there is a potential of USD 587 billion per year that could flow into this social sector, including public funds. This is calculated from 2% of all GDP, which is the benchmark for the calculation. This amount is equivalent to 12 times all foreign aid flowing to Asia, and can also meet 40% of the additional funding needs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the region.
However, this amount of funding is far from being realized. Although, as the two previous studies illustrate, Asians are among the most generous worldwide, there are three challenges that need to be overcome in order for this great opportunity to be realized. First, strengthen incentives to do good. Second, overcoming the trust deficit. Third, maximize the flow of corporate social investment. The details of these challenges and what are the recommendations for actions that need to be taken will be discussed in the next article.
Source: KONTAN, 10 September 2020