Amir Panzuri

Amir starts with a central premise that is both philosophical and practical. Conflict and hostility between the poor and the rich hurt both, ethically and economically. Most religions and philosophies view conflict between major sections of a society as harmful to both individuals as a practical economic reality, and to the society.

As a practical economic reality, without respect and mutual understanding, many a possible business opportunity between the groups will go unimagined, unexplored, or perhaps frustrated for want of trust.

To Amir the estrangement of the classes is especially unnatural and wasteful at the neighborhood level. Here the opportunity for confidence-building, and sustained interaction is most obvious. It is at this level where the opportunity for the poor and unemployed to start new businesses is most promising, especially if they can establish effective working relationships with their most likely sources of capital and effective market demand, their relatively prosperous neighbors.

Amir is, consequently, building an organization that is experimenting with a whole series of ways of creating new economic opportunities through confidence-building collaborations of the poor and the rich at the neighborhood level. He's also testing similarities integrating joint social services, most notably a high school tutoring service.

Though the top half of Javanese society has experienced dramatic, sustained real growth in wealth for most of the last two and a half decades (a period during which average per capita income roughly tripled), the landless bottom 40% of the population benefitted little if at all. Class differences have grown worse. Increasingly, the poor have flooded into cities like Yogyakarta.

Frequently these slums are quite close to the also growing middle-class neighborhoods presenting ample opportunities for friction and misunderstanding. Even though they are neighbors, and even though the sort of economic interaction Amir hopes to encourage would seem natural, the socio-economic gap seems eternally to keep them apart.

Amir believes poverty is the problem of both the rich and the poor, and that therefore they should work together toward a solution. The traditional role of the rich as charity-giver not only creates dependency, but psychologically it widens the gap that divides the two groups. What the poor need is self-confidence and the opportunity to learn how to be self-sufficient. What the rich need is services, investment opportunities, a practical way of helping, and an opportunity to grow beyond their fears and prejudices.

Amir's objective is to find a series of ways of matching both sets of needs that are likely to be replicable. He starts by observing closely what those of high socio-economic status need or might like but that is not easily available in their neighborhoods -- be it special snacks or a newspaper clipping service (an early success). He and his team will then persuade a group of such families to contribute a small amount of capital to a specific poor family and neighbor who is ready to produce and sell them what they want. When they find a successful new product or service, Amir's team will promote it in other neighborhoods to new pairings of the prosperous (investors and consumers) and the poor (newly independent producers). He and his colleagues seem always to be thinking about and testing new possibilities -- be it student boarding houses or food catering for working families.

Amir's tutoring program is a good example of how he creatively mixes elements into new arrangements that serve his dual objectives. He helps poor students stay in school by arranging for them to tutor more prosperous students -- with one condition: that the contract provides that each session benefit a poor child as well.

Amir was born in Pangkal Pinang, South Sumatera. He is a graduate of Indonesian Literature from Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta. As a student he was actively involved in social work and community organizing.