Pekka is an empowerment program to address the poverty and vulnerability of fema

le-headed households in the poorest parts of Indonesia. It wants to achieve this

objective by facilitating training to local women to become community organizer
s, providing seed grants to launchsustainable micro-finance, and various capacit
y building initiatives.
This program, which is funded by the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF), consi
sts of several components that aim at building capacity at the national level as
well as the local level.
The premise behind the Pekka program is that poor female-headed households in ge
neral, and poor widow-headed households in particular, are particularly vulnerab
le
both from their poverty and arguably, from their status as a widow. Poor fema
le-household heads often lack the capacity to organize themselves in order to ac
cess resources provided, for instance, by Indonesia s various anti-poverty and dev
elopment programs. as such, it is argued that untargeted development programs (s
uch as PNPM) are typically inadequate toaddress the issue of the vulnerabilities
of this marginal group.
Program PEKKA