The Surabaya City Government, during the Communal Branding Festival 2023 and the Awarding of the Women and Child Friendly Arek Suroboyo Village (KAS-RPA) in 2023, held at the City Hall on Saturday (25/11/2023) night, awarded 19 villages that successfully became responsive villages in handling women's and children's issues and 5 Best Outstanding Product Villages that successfully developed SME products during the Communal Branding program carried out in collaboration with Gugah Nurani Indonesia.

In his speech, Surabaya Mayor Eri Cahyadi S.T. M.T conveyed that the Communal Branding Festival is very important for efforts to improve Surabaya's economy. "Brothers and sisters who are involved in SMEs can produce extraordinary forms of SMEs. Starting from branding, how to sell it, to its finances. Each area of Surabaya is formed according to its own character with thematic villages. I am increasingly proud because Surabaya complements each other and perfects each other. This is what I envisioned when I wanted to build Surabaya. Thank you very much to the stakeholders involved," he said.

The Communal Branding Festival 2023 is a joint event resulting from collaboration between the Surabaya City Cooperative and Trade Agency and the Surabaya City Population Control and Family Planning Agency (DP3A PP KB Surabaya), Gugah Nurani Indonesia, the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology Surabaya (ITS), and Ciputra University (UC) Surabaya. It is the culmination of a series of mentoring programs to introduce products that have undergone facilitated rebranding to realize several innovative steps to strengthen villages with Outstanding Products from 31 districts in Surabaya through various activities such as workshops, mentoring, and festivals.


























Gugah Nurani Indonesia, as an NGO focusing on child protection, has been making its best efforts for Child Protection and Community Empowerment in Surabaya since 2012, one of which is through economic empowerment. Satrina Dewi, the Secretary of Gugah Nurani Indonesia, also expressed Gugah Nurani Indonesia's support for the creative economy as an effort to achieve one of the success indicators and assessments of the Arek Suroboyo Friendly to Women and Children Village. "Gugah Nurani Indonesia cares about strengthening family economies to play an optimal role in fulfilling children's rights. It is hoped that the growth of creative and productive villages will not only prosper families but also create a harmonious environment for children's growth and development."

A team of Visual Communication Design (DKV) lecturers and students has been intensively providing guidance to Villages with Outstanding Products in all 31 districts of Surabaya. Communal Branding mentoring, conducted since June 2023, has strengthened 208 local entrepreneurs and 31 young people who have been trained and empowered in Communal Branding materials, as well as promotion through digital and social media. Several Communication, Information, and Education (CIE) media have been facilitated for the future development of villages with outstanding products, including Profile Books & Video Profiles of Outstanding Product Villages, Short Films for the best villages, and promotional media such as signboards, banners, business cards, and product stickers.

"For example, we gather chili sauce businesses, from several individual businesses, we collect and build the brand 'Sambal Koepangkoe.' From there, we standardize the quality, packaging, product licensing, halal certification, and other things that are usually difficult and quite expensive to manage for small individual businesses," said Gugah Nurani Indonesia's program manager, Cicik Sri Rejeki, who also emphasized that by uniting several similar individual businesses in one village area, it opens up better opportunities for improving quality, managing permits, obtaining cheaper raw materials, reducing production costs, and achieving better marketing reach with a common brand.

























There is something interesting about this Communal Branding project—Gugah Nurani Indonesia is also encouraging Outstanding Product Villages in 31 Districts of Surabaya to care about the conditions of the surrounding community by starting to set aside a small portion of their business profits for child and women protection efforts. Tonight, it will be proven that 31 Outstanding Product Villages will allocate 2.5% - 10% of the coaching funds from Gugah Nurani Indonesia and will be given to the Indonesian Cancer Foundation, which oversees children undergoing cancer treatment. This step is a form of early education for the community to care for each other, share, and live in harmony.