eCommerce and Tourism: Leveraging on University-Community Collaboration for Socio-economic Development of Indigenous Communities in Sarawak
With many Indigenous people living in remote communities, opportunities for traditional face-to-face commerce are extremely limited. Even in urban centres, the cost of setting up bricks-and-mortar shopfronts limits business prospects for many indigenous people, despite the high demand and high price...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Proceeding |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/15540/ http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/15540/3/eCommerce.pdf |
| Summary: | With many Indigenous people living in remote communities, opportunities for traditional face-to-face commerce are extremely limited. Even in urban centres, the cost of setting up bricks-and-mortar shopfronts limits business prospects for many indigenous people, despite the high demand and high prices customers are prepared to pay for their art, crafts and cultural tourism services. As a consequence, many indigenous communities of Sarawak have in the past been subject to massive exploitation by non-indigenous middlemen, who have paid the crafts person little for their work and then enjoyed huge profits themselves.
The Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovations (ISITI) has been working together with the Penan community in Long Lamai since 2009 to set up infrastructure and telecommunications in their rural village. Identifying
the problems such as rural-urban migration and the
need to improve the social economic status of Penans
in Long Lamai, ISITI obtained grants to develop an
eCommerce eco-system for the community. The website
serves as an online platform to promote their homestay
and to sell Penan handicrafts to the outside of Long
Lamai. However during the two years of the project,
other issues have transpired due to new aspects, which
had to be taken account. In this paper, we are sharing
experience, challenges and lesson learned of our long
term partnership project with the local communities of
Sarawak. The research findings will help researchers
to better understand the structure of economic
activities in indigenous communities and then use this
understanding for designing better solutions for
addressing social and economic problems in
indigenous communities. |
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