Resi Budiana Represents Indonesia at Global Community Health Worker Forum, Advocates for Standardized Training and Fair Incentives for CHWs

Thursday, September 18, 2025 – Posyandu cadre from Senaru Village, North Lombok District, Resi Budiana, was one of the panelists at the Community Health Workers (CHW) Symposium 2025, themed “The Role of Global Health Actors in Supporting Sustainable CHW Financing.” The symposium was co-hosted by several organizations active in advancing dialogue and advocacy for community health workers’ rights at the global level, including Community Partners International (CPI), the Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC), and the Financing Alliance for Health.

In her presentation, Resi outlined the key financing challenges facing CHW programs and their impact on work in the field.

Indonesia has a unique health system. CHWs are not directly under the Ministry of Health. While we serve as extensions of the health workforce at the grassroots level, administratively we fall under the authority of village governments. This means the ones deciding on our incentives do not always share the same understanding as those assigning us our tasks,” Resi explained. “This can create a gap between workload and fair compensation.

Echoing Resi’s remarks, Dr. Grace Achungura, Regional Advisor at WHO AFRO and fellow panelist, stressed the significant impact of incentive financing schemes on CHW performance:

It cannot be denied that stable and consistent funding to ensure incentive payments can significantly affect the performance and services of community health workers.

Resi highlighted the importance of collaboration between key stakeholders, particularly between villages and community health centers (puskesmas), which in her area has been greatly supported by external partners such as the 1000 Days Fund.

In Senaru, the 1000 Days Fund not only trains us but actually lives in the village to provide hands-on support, while also helping us advocate for our needs not only with village and puskesmas authorities but also with the district government

In 2023, North Lombok District for the first time set a formal minimum CHW incentive of Rp250,000 (USD ~16) through regulations on Village Fund allocation. This breakthrough in advocacy triggered an increase in CHW incentives across many villages in the district. “Previously, the average incentive was only around Rp100,000 (USD ~6) per month. But since this regulation, many villages have reported increases in CHW incentives,” Resi added.

Separately, Lidya Sophiani, Implementation Director of the 1000 Days Fund, emphasized the importance of supporting CHWs to realize the Ministry of Health’s blueprint for primary health care.

The Technical Guidelines for Integrated Primary Health Care (Minister of Health Decree No. HK.01.07/Menkes/2015/2023) describe the growing role of CHWs, including conducting home visits, health screenings, and data collection. CHWs are now required to master 25 basic skills. With these rising demands, they deserve proper training, equipment, and fair compensation aligned with their workload. This is also reinforced by Ministry of Home Affairs Regulation No. 13/2024, which affirms CHWs’ right to receive incentives

In its programs, the 1000 Days Fund not only provides training to build CHW skills but also equips them with comprehensive educational tools and supports their advocacy with stakeholders to secure sustainable funding. “The ultimate goal of our program is to strengthen stakeholder collaboration so CHWs can achieve the ‘5Ts’: trained, tooled, supervised, incentivized, and tenure-secured. That way, they can carry out primary health care in line with the government’s blueprint, even after our program ends. Our main aim is to ensure the success of the government’s blueprint,” Lidya added.

To date, the 1000 Days Fund has trained 61,712 posyandu cadres across Indonesia, reaching 655,806 households with stunting-prevention counseling for pregnant women and families with children under two years old.