Demographic
Bonus and Youth Entrepreneurship; Empowering Street Children in Medan with the
Local Wisdom
Tri Sumaria, Universitas Sumatera
Utara, trisumaria@gmail.com
Demographic bonus presently become an actual issue
to discuss especially in developing country like Indonesia. This is a situation
when the number of people within the productive age bracket is higher than the
number of elderly (unproductive) people. It is predicted will happen in
2025-2035.
The demographic bonus offer a significant
opportunity for the economic development countries if the youth's skills and
aptitude are developed as soon as possible. At the same time, this situation
can also have a negative impact if we are not ready for this kind of
competitive atmosphere. A majority of productive-aged people, would only
increase the higher population if they were not provided with adequate job
opportunities and skill development programs.
Meanwhile, live in the big city like Medan seems
very challenging. There are many street children. According to the Department
of Social and Employment city of Medan in 2014 that the number of street
children in the city of Medan reach 1.526 children.
The high population of street children in Medan is a
big problem, but we must believe that the street children have great potential
if we can manage it properly and give them opportunity. It can be a challenge
for us to establish the entrepreneurship spirit in streets children as well as
useful for developing and maintaining the Indonesian economy in the future.
According to a study which is conducted by a development
sociologist, David Mc Lelland said that a country will be prosperous if the
entrepreneur has at least 2% of the total population of the country. In 2005,
Singapore has the entrepreneur 7,2% of the total population, whereas in 2001
there were only 2,1%. In 1983, the US population of 280 million have 6 million
entrepreneurs, or about 2,14% of the total population.
Therefore, a solution to solve the above problem is
to make street children as young entrepreneurs. The first step that must be
taken is to provide creative economic learning by utilizing Ulos (traditional
weakening cloth) as local wisdom Batak tribe. There are several points of
learning that will be given to street children:
-
Training of creativity, such as the
manufacture of souvenirs, pillow cases, bags, clothing, tablecloths, and
wallet.
-
Investment value of entrepreneurship,
such as self-confidence, self-sufficiency, to train how to make networking and
communicate, as well as be able to establish good networking.
-
Training of product marketing at
national and international markets.
Strategic
steps that will be taken to carry out this idea is through colaboration with
the govemor, institutions engaged in social, private companies, and mass media.
The establishment of street children as an entrepreneur hopefully can increase
the economy of Indonesia, they were be able to confront the demographic bonus
in the 2025-2035, and have a good competitiveness in the era of the MEA.
