Universitas Gadjah Mada
Faculty of Economics and Business

SONJO (Sambatan Jogja) is an inspiring humanitarian movement that has been operating since March 24, 2020 and is based in WhatsApp (WAG) groups. Today, SONJO already consists of 2000 members of 20 internal WhatsApp groups and 4 WhatsApp groups for collaborative work with other communities in West Java, Jakarta and Central Java. SONJO aims to help people who are at risk and vulnerable from the adverse impact of COVID-19 in the Province of Yogyakarta. SONJO works in three sectors: health, economy, and education, and has developed 21 programs consisting of 7 programs in the economy and 14 programs in health.

On Tuesday (12/10) SONJO released a webinar presentation titled as "Minimizing the Adverse Health and Economic Impacts of COVID-19 through Social Capital in the Digital Era" for The Humlog Challenge Global Business School Network (GBSN) as well as being the last series of The 66th Dies Natalis FEB UGM. This webinar presentation session may not only stimulate the solution development, but may also provide inspiration to create other humanitarian movements.

In this webinar, the first section is a discussion on the health sector presented by Prof. Rimawan Pradiptyo, Ph.D, Head of the Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business UGM, with the title "SONJO: Minimizing the Health Impacts of the Covid-19 Through Social Capital". Based on the literature, social capital has an essential role during critical situations and Indonesia has adopted it as a natural disaster recovery strategy. According to Prof. Rimawan, if used properly, social capital will be able to minimize the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic that we have been facing for almost 2 years. Actually, we can think of Covid-19 as a common enemy that basically working like a public goods, which is nonrival and nonexcludable, so everybody will get the impact and there needs to be a synergy of joint cooperation in handling it.

SONJO is here to help with a focus on targeting vulnerable people affected by the Covid-19 pandemic by adhering to the values of integrity, transparency, empathy, and synergy. Synergy and problem solving by SONJO is carried out through the WhatsApp group by generating demand from members and then meeting it with supply among its members. After that, the process continues towards developing a program through several stages, namely SONJO Angkringan which is a weekly webinar to formulate programs, SONJO Migunani which is a media of training, and synergizing between the parties involved.

Now, SONJO has 21 programs which are divided into economics and health. In the health sector, the first program initiated by SONJO was named SONJO Rewangan. This program created a Covid-19 patient referral system among hospitals and succeeded in helping 150 patients get proper treatment service. The second program in the health sector is the establishment of multilevel shelters in collaboration with the Bantul Health Office, which aims to classify Covid-19 patients based on their criticality level. By using this method, only patients with moderate to high symptoms can be prioritized to be placed in the hospital.

The second section of this webinar is a presentation session discussing the economic sector by Gumilang Aryo Sahadewo, Ph.D., Assistant Lecturer and Research and Lecturer Staff FEB UGM, with the title "Community-Based Initiatives to Mitigate the Covid-19 Effect among Micro and Small Enterprises". Gumilang explained that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) brought many challenges that had to be overcome and adapted. For example, before the pandemic it was generally easier for us to go to the store to buy goods/services and pay in cash, but now there has been an adaptation in conducting transactions using the internet and non-cash payments.

The first initiative initiated by SONJO is aiming to support MSMEs to pursue digital transformation. However, it is certainly not that easy to implement due to some obstacles such as low digital literacy of MSME actors, limited budget to adopt technology, and lack of knowledge of online marketing strategies. SONJO then created four community-based initiatives. The first is an online marketing tutorial for MSME players through Youtube, for example, regarding tips for making business logos, product photos, and product posters. Second, SONJO created a progressive web-app called Etalase Pasar Sonjo to showcase various products from MSMEs based on Google Sheets, free of charge, and easy to operate. Third, community-based marketing through social media Instagram by collaborating, one of which is with the Department of Political Science UGM, to raise awareness of these MSME products. The last initiative is peer learning or sharing knowledge through social networks between SONJO members, especially from members who have successfully adopted a strategy to reduce costs significantly.

Reportage: Kirana Lalita Pristy/Sony Budiarso.