Development of rural group entrepreneurship in Indonesia: benefits, problems, and challenges

Rural entrepreneurship especially for women has been imperative because various entrepreneurial activities have empowered them in social, economic and cultural fields. The strategy of using group to foster rural entrepreneurship has been appealing for development planners and donors. With such a spirit, Bank Indonesia in collaboration with the village authority has developed a women business group in Papringan Village, Banyumas District, Central Java through the provision of trainings, production tools, a gallery, and support to participate in trade fairs. Using interviews as the main data collection, this paper presents the lessons learned from this initiative particularly from three aspects: benefits as members perceive, problems and ways to deal with them, and challenges facing the group in the future. The results show the following findings: a) equal level of skills or complementary skills among members could be an important aspect to develop group entrepreneurship; b) providing gradual victory could be important to retain and motivate members; c) member recruitment should consider their motive. Because the supervision will soon come to an end, the mission of the group should be clearly defined whether it serves as a business entity or a business incubator for villagers who want to learn to be entrepreneurs.