Weaving Solutions for Rural Indonesian Women

This past October marked the ten-year anniversary of Dinny Jusuf’s organization TORAJAMELO, which translates to “beautiful Toraja.” While this small village nestled in the mountainous area of South Sulawesi known as Toraja is certainly “beautiful,” the injustice women in this village were facing is what moved Dinny to action. 

TORAJAMELO began with a simple idea: to empower women as artisans so that they would not need to embark on exploitative journeys to neighboring countries like Malaysia where exploitation and trafficking are rampant. 

This movement, now extending to ten communities,  has humble origins – a revelation Dinny had during a morning hike through Toraja. She noticed how many children were being born as a consequence of the abuse women labor migrants experienced abroad. A solution presented itself: employ women to weave traditional Torajanese cloth for her to then sell so they would not need to suffer dangerous conditions of working as laborers. 

Over the past decade, Dinny has scaled deep — changing mindsets around traditional weaving and scaled up — changing policies surrounding cultural heritage. She has built a network of now almost 1,500 weavers, and has not only revived an age-old Torajanese craft but curbed outward migration and created sustainable ecosystems within rural communities. 

A Simple Idea for a Complex Problem

Dinny was born in Java, Indonesia to a native Indonesian father and a Chinese mother during a tumultuous chapter of Indonesia’s political history rife with injustice and discrimination. In this period, Chinese-Indonesians suffered especially violent attacks and faced perpetual discrimination.

Dinny believes her life experiences as a Chinese-Indonesian, both inspiring and heart-breaking, were meant to prepare her for TORAJAMELO, as they strengthened her resolve to support marginalized women and help them regain dignity as artists and breadwinners.

After an emotionally grueling three years of work in women’s rights advocacy, Dinny moved to her husband Danny’s small village of Toraja to relax, read, write, and take her dog on morning walks through the village. 

After noticing how few economic opportunities existed within the village, she realized it was fueling exploitative labor migration patterns for Torajanese women. Then, Dinny discovered the meager compensation women received after the fees for the illegal traffickers were accounted for; it was minuscule in exchange for what they were risking and suffering. Not to mention the women who never returned: the death toll of female migrants is in the thousands. 

At the same time, she realized the untapped potential of weaving textiles as a source of income for Torajanese women.

This observation, coupled with her knowledge from serving as Secretary-General on the Commission of Anti-Violence Against Women in Indonesia about the gaps between the artisans and weavers and the market supply, gave her an idea to start TORAJAMELO and create livelihood solutions for women in the village prompting them to stay and avoid potential abuse.

“[It was] putting two and two together – a simple idea,” Dinny exclaimed. 

Age-Old Tradition Becomes Trendy

Before TORAJAMELO gained the traction it has today, there was a major obstacle to overcome: how to revive the age-old practice of Torajanese weaving on a scale that would both incentivize more women to weave and attract customers to sustain their products.

In order to popularize Torajanese weaving, she needed to scale deep – changing the mindsets of Indonesians pertaining to this craft and their cultural heritage, thereby reinstilling a sense of pride and dignity for her weavers.  

“I knew – I know that Indonesians and most others do not appreciate their own art or their own products until foreigners do, and they are successful overseas,” she stated.

With that in mind, she took the cloth to Japan, a market with a deep appreciation for both quality and hand-made goods. Dinny joined forces with her fashion designer sister Nina who helped steer the design front of TORAJAMELO to make trendy, fashionable pieces. Soon, TORAJAMELO was found in top department stores across Japan, and this development quickly gained the attention of Indonesians at home. 

After inviting a government official to their fashion show in Jakarta, Dinny said, “He made a regulation that all civil servants, school children and people who attended traditional ceremonies were required to wear original, hand-woven textiles from Toraja… Then, it boomed.

As the weavers grew from one to ten, to 100 and beyond, the spotlight on Dinny’s organization and work also grew. TORAJAMELO was disrupting long-standing migration patterns and connecting them to livelihoods. 

Dinny remarked, “We think that Toraja women weavers are strong people. We do not think we need to empower them because they are already powerful … all they need is access to market and capital.” 

Since TORAJAMELO started in 2008, it has worked with over 1,000 weavers whose earnings have skyrocketed from $40/month to a livable income of $150-$230/month. The products range from bags to clothes and home goods.