Investment

In 2011 and 2012, APRIL Indonesia invested approximately USD4.6 million in various community programmes. These have yielded a range of positive outcomes.

Figure 48a below shows a summary of the total community development investments in the last two years.

Figure 48a: APRIL INDONESIA'S COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT INVESTMENTS 2011-2012April Indonesias Community Development Investments 2011 2012

Integrated Farming System

The Integrated Farming System (IFS) is a key component of our community development strategy. IFS aims to improve the skills of community farmers and raise the income-generating opportunities of community farmer groups.

IFS has three main focus areas:

  • Training villagers in farming activities such as horticulture, vegetable farming, livestock rearing and husbandry, and freshwater aquaculture.
  • Providing start-up investments, tools and materials.
  • Continuing ongoing technical and managerial guidance through APRIL Community Development field officers.

We currently manage two training centres that help deliver technical and practical knowledge to local farmers*. We have also donated another training centre to local district governments to share our knowledge with local people*.

Figure 48b: KEY FACTS AND FIGURES FOR IFSKey facts and figures for IFS

Small and Medium Enterprise Development

APRIL launched the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) development programme with the objective of providing aspiring entrepreneurs with technical and financial expertise. This programme supports a wide range of businesses, within and outside the forestry industry. Examples of SME businesses that directly support our operations are fibre plantation planting and maintenance teams, harvesting contractors and transport services.

Another group of entrepreneurs have participated in our vocational training programmes to develop livelihood skills such as tailoring, honey production, carpentry and motorcycle repair.

APRIL has also assisted these entrepreneurs to secure bank loans to fund their businesses, by providing formal assurance to banks that the entrepreneurs hold legitimate contracts with the company that will enable them to meet loan repayment commitments.

In 2011, APRIL helped SMEs secure over IDR 9 billion in bank funding to start and develop their businesses. In 2012, over IDR7 billion in bank funding was supported by APRIL.

Figure 49: KEY FACTS AND FIGURES FOR SMEsKey facts and figures for smes

Education

We strongly believe that education is a major factor in alleviating poverty. Hence providing economically disadvantaged children with access to quality education is a core community development programme comprising:

  • Scholarships
  • Grants & Teacher training support
  • Educational Infrastructure support

In 2011, APRIL re-worked its school scholarship programme to focus specifically on high achieving and economically disadvantaged students who are in their last two years of secondary school.

This was done to avoid duplicating the efforts of Government financial aid programmes, which also cover economically disadvantaged primary and lower secondary level students.

APRIL’s teacher development programme previously awarded bursaries to teachers in rural areas. In 2009, the programme refocused its efforts to training in order to better support teacher skill development and help raise the quality of education in rural areas.

APRIL has invested in developing the quality of Indonesian pulp and paper professionals through our talent development programme. The APRIL Master’s Scholarship Programme aims to nurture the best local talent in the industry, which in turn, adds depth to our organisation’s expertise.

Since the programme’s inception in 2007, APRIL has sponsored 26 employees for graduate studies at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand, with an average of four grants awarded per year.

Local high school graduates can apply for full scholarships to study at the Akademi Teknologi Pulp & Kertas (Academy for Pulp and Paper Technology), part of the well respected Bandung Institute of Technology in Java.

In 2011, a new scholarship programme was introduced for local high school graduates to pursue agricultural diploma studies at the Institut Teknologi Pertanian(INSTIPER), the Institute of Agricultural Technology in Jogjakarta. Scholarship recipients have their full tuition fees and costs covered, in addition to living bursaries for the full duration of their studies.

Figure 50: KEY FACTS AND FIGURES FOR EDUCATION INITIATIVESKey facts and figures for education initiatives

Health

APRIL’s community development programme includes access to healthcare for communities in rural areas. Prior to 2011, APRIL’s programme supported the provision and funding of government mobile clinics, an immunization programme, a food and nutrition supplement programme and a public health education programme. From 1999-2012, a total of 132,716 individuals were served by APRIL’s health programmes.

In 2011, APRIL re-worked this programme’s design to avoid duplicating efforts of the government’s health services programmes. To support the Indonesian government’s effort to improve its Human Development Index, APRIL now focuses efforts on education programmes that are preventive in nature, as opposed to curative.

The current programme has a two-prong approach, the first being public health education such as hygiene campaigns in schools. The other part focuses on supporting public health officers at the village level, focusing on family planning, pre-natal, post-natal and maternal health programmes in order to reduce the rates of maternal and infant mortality in villages. APRIL also sponsors nutrition supplement programmes for mothers and babies at the village level.

Over the last two years, the programme served 9,965 people (2011: 7324 in 93 villages and 2012: 2641 in 3 villages), as well as ran 25 health campaigns.

Sports Development

APRIL sponsors the professional coaching and development of local talent in four sports: karate, lawn tennis, badminton and football. Since the programme’s inception in 2009, 142 talented youth from schools in our area have received training and coaching at the APRIL sports facilities in Kerinci, where our mill is located.

Our goal is to groom sporting talent to compete at regional and national levels. In a relatively short time, our sponsored athletes have achieved some impressive results, earning 18 medals at National level and 123 medals at the Regional level over the last two years.

Social Infrastructure

In 2011 and 2012, APRIL undertook 441 social infrastructure projects for local communities. This included infrastructure development and improvements to schools, places of worship, road and drainage maintenance, water and sanitation, family planning clinics, civic buildings and sporting facilities and equipment.

Figure 51: APRIL INDONESIA SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE INITIATIVES 2011-2012APRIL Indonesia Social Infrastructure Initiatives 2011-2012

Employee Volunteerism

APRIL’s employee volunteer programme aims to foster stronger relationships with local communities. Our employees work with local people on a range of village improvement activities known as "gotong royong." These involve tree planting, repair and improvement of buildings and other structures, rubbish collection and cleaning and tidying of public areas.

In 2011, 2077 employees spent 10,385 hours volunteering in 48 villages, working with 5900 members of local communities. In 2012, 1676 employees spent 8380 hours working with 6325 locals across 51 villages.