Community Movement in Dealing with Covid-19: Case Study of Indonesia

This paper explored the government and community initiatives in dealing with Covid-19 using a case study because Pandemic Covid-19 has affected all aspects of human beings including Indonesia. The government has taken many actions including large-scale social restriction, physical and social distancing, social assistance, cash direct assistant, and training for pre-work. There are also community initiatives such as lumbung pangan (food barns), jemuran berkah (blessing clothesline), bilik disinfektan (disinfectant booth). But, this paper also found that people are treated as objects because the government applied a top-down approach while community initiatives helped people alleviate the burden due to loss of job and loss of income and mitigate the spread of Covid-19. Covid-19 is a communicable disease and the effective way to deal with is by community approach treating people as subjects. People must be aware that they must be in the front-liner in dealing with Covid-19. Wearing a mask, hand washing, and keep distancing with others must be done by everyone and everywhere. In addition, people and neighborhood associations (RT and RW) as the lowest unit of government structure must be utilized as a link to delivering government program, and monitoring program.