Turning Literacy into Local Economic Empowerment: The KLIK Program in Bandung

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Community and MSME perspective. KLIK gives local communities opportunities to turn knowledge and local potential into practical business activities. The KLIK Festival provides a space where MSME actors can present products, learn from others, strengthen communication skills, and build confidence in marketing their businesses. The photographs on page 5 illustrate this practical dimension, showing products from participating urban villages and community participation in the Festival. Local government perspective. The program shows that effective community empowerment requires more than launching an innovation. Local government needs capable program managers, clear coordination mechanisms, continuous monitoring, and collaboration across organizational and territorial boundaries. For sustainability, the study recommends standardized operational guidelines, structured monitoring and evaluation, and continued capacity building. Public library perspective. Libraries can evolve from primarily providing books and reading services into community learning and empowerment hubs. By connecting literacy with entrepreneurship and local economic development, public libraries can contribute more directly to social and economic well-being. Digital perspective. The next stage of KLIK should make greater use of digital platforms for promoting MSME products, documenting local economic potential, and sharing knowledge among urban villages. This could broaden the program's reach and help make its benefits more sustainable. International perspective. The Bandung experience also provides a useful contrast with South Korea. While KLIK emphasizes locally based entrepreneurship, MSME development, and experiential learning, the South Korean approach described in the article is more strongly supported by standardized national systems and lifelong-learning-oriented public libraries. The comparison suggests that Bandung can retain KLIK's community-based character while strengthening its institutional and learning systems. Policy perspective. The key message for policymakers is straightforward: literacy policy can create greater public value when it connects learning, entrepreneurship, local government, community participation, and digital innovation. Rather than treating literacy and economic empowerment as separate agendas, KLIK demonstrates the potential value of integrating them within a single community-based model.

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