. (ANTARA) - Java is one of the provinces in Indonesia with myriad potentials, such as cultural diversity, agriculture, friendly people, and openness, as well as extraordinary natural tourism potential.
Apart from potential tourist spots, there are also areas with cool weather that tourists can enjoy.
One of the private universities in Surabaya, East Java Province, carries out community service activities to support the tourist village with funding from the Matching Fund, Kedaireka of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia.
The activity facilitates the development of tourist villages in several districts of East Java Province, such as Jombang, Sidoarjo, Blitar, and Ponorogo.
The village with these potentials is Cupak, located in Ngusingan District, Jombang Regency, East Java Province.
Cupak Village, with cultural tourism potential, is suitable for becoming a tourist destination.
Visitors to tourist sites in Cupak Village will get facilities and services from the community while simultaneously developing the local potential, such as in agriculture products, charcoal, porang, gadung, pandan, and wood products.
Some of the products are potentially developed as souvenirs for visitors. However, the producer has to transform the product into foods and souvenirs of Cupak Village.
To this end, the development of MSMEs needed to support the development of tourist villages.
Professional management of the tourism village and environment will positively impact the village and vice versa.
Thus, the community does not only look at the economic side of development but also pays attention to other aspects of the development of village quality and sustainability.
The approach used by the university team to solve problems faced by partners in this activity is to assist tourism managers, the community, and MSMEs.
Thus, they can conduct productive activities and diversify products from existing local potentials, for instance, porang, gadung, and pandan agricultural products for making mats and other products.
Appropriate technology is also provided in the form of porang peeling and washing machines, porang chopping machines, and porang flour machines. Moreover, there is a spinner machine for rinsing oil from fried gadung products.
In addition, the team assists in managing the tourism village, such as by inaugurating Cupak Village as a tourist village by Chancellor of Untag Surabaya, Prof. Dr Mulyanto Nugroho, MM CMA CPA.
He also formed Pokdarwis and assisted in managing tourism villages by involving the surrounding community, farmers, and MSMEs.
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The assistance of tourism village development
The university provides training in managing the tourist village and its substructure to be developed in Cupak Village.
The assistance was offered by expanding the knowledge of the community and tourism managers regarding the potentials of tourism, agricultural marketing, and existing MSMEs to develop creativity and innovation in producing various local prospects.
This assistance was also provided by directing local communities to own businesses, so the business activities were legitimate to export to other cities.
Moreover, the team helped to arrange the Pokdarwis management and established the tourist village.
Training on managing the tourist village has been offered to Pokdarwis administrators, local youth organizations, MSMEs enterprises, and the local community.
Sugiati Ningsih, the tourism village's expert who provided training, spoke at length about the tourism village and how to manage it.
According to Ningsih, the village has several criteria, including the attraction value or having a selling tourist attraction, amenity or the existence of supporting facilities that support tourism, accessibility or the presence of road to tourist sites, and ancillary or the main substructure, such as the management and legal institution.
Thus, it can be said that a tourist village has several criteria that must be fulfilled to become a location that is attractive to visit.
Training on product diversification
The development of a tourist village will proceed if people are involved, especially in developing the local potential, for instance, by creating handicrafts as souvenirs.
The team gave this training to farmers and MSMEs enterprises in empowering the local potential as part of building a tourist village.
Indonesia is known as an agricultural country, and several villages have extraordinary natural resource potential.
The participation of MSMEs in the village is essential in developing a tourist village since with their existence, there are fine products to be sold and enjoyed by visitors as village souvenirs.
Despite several MSMEs supporting the ongoing development of a tourist village, the existing potential still needs to be developed, for instance, porang agricultural products that are only sold as raw materials at cheap prices.
To raise the economic value, porang must be processed into flour as an ingredient in various cakes and other snacks.
The team also assists MSMEs enterprises that carried out conventional business to develop creative and innovative products, such as the diversification of products for porang farmers, who earlier only sold at cheap prices. The team provides them with the Appropriate Technology Processing (TTG) to enhance the value.
The TTG machine was provided to process agricultural products into items that have economic value, for example, porang plants in Cupak Jombang Village can be made into flour, so a machine is needed to turn porang glondongan into flour.
Another example was the production of mat handicrafts that needed to be diversified into bags, tissue boxes, and so on.
In addition to training on agricultural products, another mainstay product of Cupak and Munggut villages was pandan mats.
Pandanus can grow abundantly and wild along the forests belonging to Perhutani, and they take it to be woven into mats at a relatively cheap price.
Hence, in this activity, experts were brought in to provide training in making various crafts originating from pandanus. In the end, what was originally only sold as mats at a low price and required quite a lot of materials, then got developed into creative products.
Tourism village is created to generate employment opportunities and income for local people as well as preserve the local environment and culture and utilize local natural resources.
Hence, the participation of various parties is essentially needed, including from the community, village officer, and related services, in the development of a tourist village in Cupak Village, Ngusingan Sub-district, Jombang Regency.
*) Siti Mujanah is an academician in Faculty of Economics and Business UNTAG Surabaya.
The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the ANTARA News Agency.
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