Through the Student Organization Capacity Building Program (PPKO), the Student Council of Economics and Business Faculty at Universitas Dian Nuswantoro (Udinus) developed a coffee village based on the concept of edupreneurship in Gonoharjo Village, Kendal Regency, Central Java. The program lasted for six months, with the team consisting of members of the Student Council committed to turning Gonoharjo to be a village centered around entrepreneurship. 

The program was implemented by utilizing the coffee products of the village. More than two out of three the land within the village serves as fields. This makes the majority of the locals working as farmers. The majority of farmers in Gonoharjo are members of the Farmer Community. However, these farmers often encounter problems, including a decrease in the value of the crops.

The team leader, Farin Nabila Mawarni, revealed that the drop in value was caused by the fact that the farmers sold the crops too early when the crops, in this case coffee, had not even matured or ripe.

“Another problem is that the village has not had any agency or institution coordinating the crops. The farmers also did not understand the proper way of processing coffee. This causes the value add of the coffee products to drop. For that reason, we from the Student Council of the Economics and Business Faculty propose a solution of implementing edupreneurship based on a coffee diversification process,” Farin highlighted.

Edupreneurship-based Innovation

During the edupreneurship program, there were four empowerment programs, with the first being the reactivation of BUMDES organizational structures to optimize the crops’ value. This organizational structure also aims to prosper the farmers within the village.

The second one was implementing the one village one product method through numerous training programs. Those programs include how to produce powdered coffee, organic soaps, diffusers, and a featured product known as cascara tea, which is a tea product created from coffee shells.

“We also improve the supply chain of coffee products based on Information Technology through a website named Gon’s Coffee. This e-commerce website will be utilized to market the products. In addition, we also conducted one more activity, namely, forming youth groups to improve the capacity of crops’ production,” she explained.

Suhita Whini Setyahuni, S.E., M.Ak., Ak., the supervisor of this program, explained that the program sought to improve the prosperity and well-being of the locals within the Gonoharjo Area through the edupreneurship-based coffee village. This also encompasses improving the locals’ earnings by developing more effective crops and their diversification. In addition, this program will also reduce the dependency on using conventional marketing systems.

“In the current era of technological advancements, we can utilize the technology to expand our market reach by using digital marketing. Thus, the coffee diversification process in Gonoharjo Village can be accessed by visitors both locals and foreigners,” she concluded. (Humas Udinus/Ika. Foto: Dok. DPM FEB Udinus)