Pandemic Response: The Role of “Kampung Tangguh” as Indonesian Context of Strategic Community Empowerment

Abstract

The pandemic crisis has caused significant impacts in all sectors of social, economic, and environment; Asian countries are no exception. The great fragile wave attacks health and economic system, especially in an urban area where the risk and impacts develop expressively. The governance response to the global crisis defines the shortand long-term consequences on the societies and the country system. Meanwhile, the local communities play their roles in responding to the pandemic crisis. This study presents the community initiatives in Indonesia to urge the pandemic response from the bottom-up movement. The initiatives called “kampung tangguh” are seen as an effective alternative to the context of a big developing country like Indonesia, as the administrative units are technically formed in multiple layers. The descriptive studies were presented to pinpoint the strength of the Indonesian context of
strategic community empowerment in pandemic crisis response. The results show that the sense of volunteering and ‘gotong-royong’ local values among the local leaders and the neighborhood actors are significant to the root power of ‘kampung tangguh” to fulfill the gap between the unprepared policymakers and the fast-growing crisis at the public level. This study suggests that the public policies in pandemic response need to consider the local context of culture and community empowerment as the adaptive, innovative, and comprehensive approach to the pandemic response in developing countries.