goodmorningpapua.com – The West Papua Representative of Bank Indonesia provided a training of the Noken spinning tools to a group of Noken craftsmen at Manokwari Regency. The activity were carried out at the Dekranasda office of the West Papua Province Wednesday, April 28, 2021.
The Noken of Papua has been designated as an intangible world cultural heritage by UNESCO in Paris, France on December 4, 2012. Head of the Economic Development Unit of Bank Indonesia for the West Papua Representative, Aries Purnomohadi said that the process of making of Noken creations is generally still worked manually by rolling wood fibers as raw material of Noken on the leg which has an impact on the physical condition of the craftsman. The manual process takes a long time for the wood grain to be smooth.
The power supply needed is only 80 watts so that it saves energy. The machine body consists of waste wood and the layered waste so that it is lighter to carry around but still has high quality.
The Noken craftsmen in West Papua are the first to use the second generation of Noken spinning machines, after previously, the craftsmen at Papua (Jayapura), through the facilitation of Bank Indonesia of Papua, have used the first generation of spinning machines in 2018.
This training is a form of synergy between Bank Indonesia and the West Papua Dekranasda as a following up of the Cooperation Agreement signed on March 3, 2021.
Each group is given 1 (one) spinning machine tool. In addition, Bank Indonesia also provided assistance with raw materials in the form of raw materials of melinjo / crown of god / forest gersen and the supporting equipment.
Deputy Chairperson of the West Papua Dekranada, Lani Lasainggi Lakotani supports the development of MSMEs, especially the Noken crafts or the knitting works in West Papua.
It is hoped that the initiation and attention of Bank Indonesia for the Noken craft will be supported by the OPD ranks of West Papua Province and districts / cities so that the Noken will increasingly exist and become an icon of West Papua.
Furthermore, the Deputy Chairperson of Dekranasda mentioned the large potential marketing / sales opportunities through e-commerce channels.
The latest data from Bank Indonesia shows that during 2020 the recorded value of the online sales of goods in West Papua, both inside and outside West Papua, reached IDR 3.49 billion.
From this figure, sales of fashion products are ranked 2nd with a nominal sales of Rp. 714 million, up from the realization in 2019 of Rp. 530 million. This figure is taken from the 4 (four) largest marketplaces in Indonesia and has been processed by Bank Indonesia.
Through this kind of training, it is hoped that the quality of the Noken to increase more. Supported by creative ideas for Noken innovation that are in line with fashion trends, expected that the Noken produced to be able to compete with the other knitting works in Indonesia, even at the global level.
As an effort to continue to support the sustainability of this typical Papuan knitting work, this training opportunity also involved students from the University of Papua who are part of the Indonesian New Generation (GenBI) community.
This community consists of students receiving Bank Indonesia scholarships, both for undergraduate and D3 levels, who have the desire to develop and learn many things including Noken crafts.
In the future, Bank Indonesia of the West Papua to continue the training activities through onboarding and digitizing of MSMEs and to synergize with various parties in order to make West Papua MSMEs more independent and highly competitive.