Mr. Balthas Seibold, Senior Project Manager of InWEnt gGmbH, Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH, Capacity Building International, together with Misses Sally Ganibe and Angelita Valdez, Regional Coordinator and Program Coordinator respectively of the Asian Women in Co-operative Development Forum (AWCF), visited Indonesia by the last week of January 2007 to see for themselves the progress of the different ICT-enabled business development centers (BDCs) that were committed by the Forum for Indonesian Co-operatives Movement (FORMASI) member NGOs and co-operatives.

For this monitoring visit, they visited two FORMASI affiliates located in Jakarta, Indonesia particularly co-op Melati, a primary co-op affiliate of FORMASI which has recently developed its Local Area Network (LAN) through the assistance of its Co-op IT Specialist and Trainer, and Bina Arta, a micro-finance bank owned and managed by Bina Desa group of companies wherein Bina Desa is one of the non-government organization (NGO) affiliates of FORMASI. During this visit, the said organizations reaffirmed their commitment to further develop their BDCs to help their members, especially their women members, in addressing their economic needs.

In line with this monitoring visit, the monitoring group also met and interviewed some of the co-op IT specialists and trainers as well as some of the co-op members to get their views or reflections on how they themselves or their respective communities were benefited by the it@coops project.

Misses Ganibe and Valdez made another follow-up visit and meeting with the FORMASI National Executive Board of Directors (BODs) last 1 April 2007. For this meeting, the two organizations-together with the FORMASI NGO and co-op representatives with existing BDCs-evaluated the progress of the it@coops project as it is being implemented by FORMASI taking into consideration the project’s cycle which will end by 2007.