Community Empowerment Council (MPM) of Muhammadiyah Central Leadership (PP Muhammadiyah) held a National Upgrading on Friday (04/20-22). The upgrading was attended by administrators and volunteers of community empowerment of University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM). The former chairman of MPR Amien Rais came as keynote speaker on the first day.
The Chairman of MPM Said Tuhulele stated the agenda was the follow up of MPM workshop in the previous year held in UMM. He determined the event would actualize the step of community empowerment massively. “Today, we have 150 participants who are ready to be the cutting edge of community empowerment movement nationally. Through this, we expect it would be more massive movement and it would give benefits to more people,” he stated.
In his explanation, Amien appraised that Muhammadiyah has succeeded to perform religious preaching in two ways; education and health. Moreover, there were even no non-governmental organizations in the world compared to the number and quality of those two types of Muhammadiyah charity and business. “The outsanding UMM is one of the proofs of successful Muhammadiyah charity and business. It just an example,” said the former Chairman of PP Muhammadiyah.
Nevertheless, Amien acknowledged the religious preaching of Muhammadiyah must be completed with the spirit of KH. Ahmad Dahlan, the founder of Muhammadiyah. His spirit was how to help mustad’afin (the poor).
“Our religious preaching on amar ma'ruf nahi munkar (commanding right and forbidding wrong) has been right. However, it is not enough. We need to struggle againts injustice which causes structural impoverishment. The poor people must be helped by MPM,” said Amin.
Amin added, if there are still unempowered people, MPM should not stop working. The empowerment must be continuously done since rivals do the same in impoverishing the poor. Economic structure of global politics often places community as a victim.
Amien assumed, there were global elite powers which continuously control weak countries. They do their actions through economic power, mass media and even political intervention through general election. “We need to cautious on this,” said Amien warned.
Besides Amin, the resources of upgrading were Prof. Dr. Halim Ilyas from UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, Pokja TNP2K of Vice President Office and the Director of Bukopin Syariah Bank. Meanwhile, the material on partnership network building of community empowerment involved Baznas and AusAID.
“In South Sulawesi, MPM has run well. Even today's most participants come from South Sulawesi, 15 persons. We asked them to present their best practice of community empowerment program as an example for others,” stated Said. (uci/nov/nas/t_vik)
