Woman who lost her husband in Jakarta terror attacks gets a crowdfunded house

Laili Herlina and her two children in front of the new house she was able to purchase with money from a crowdfunding campaign. Photo credit: Kitabisa.

Indonesia had a rough start of 2016. On January 14, a terror attack in the central business district of the capital took the lives of four civilians.

One of the victims was Rais Karna, a 37-year-old bank employee. He left behind a wife and two children, aged five and two.

For the widowed Laili Herlina the tragedy didn’t end there.

Laili and her children were reportedly evicted from their rented house in the days following Rais’ death because the landlord suspected the family might have something to do with the terrorist group who executed the attack. (Rais was later declared innocent by the police).

After going through all this, events took a turn for the better. A local NGO called Dompet Dhuafa took on Laili’s case and helped her raise funds through Indonesian crowdfunding site Kitabisa.

The campaign, which ended in February, brought together US$14,230 from almost 900 donors.

Today, Kitabisa reports, Laili bought a new house for herself and her children with that money.

Vikra Ijas, CMO at Kitabisa, tells Tech in Asia that the story of Laili’s eviction was verified by both Dompet Dhuafa and Kitabisa.

Crowdfunding success stories are becoming more frequent in Indonesia.

A handful of crowd-activation sites in the archipelago have begun differentiating their models – for instance, Kitabisa specializes in donations for social causes, while GandengTangan runs crowdlending campaigns that support micro entrepreneurs.

The amounts raised, however, are tiny compared to the millions of dollars US-based crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter can bring in. That’s of course to be expected. The cost of living in Jakarta is much lower than, say, in NYC. These amounts can go a long way to help individuals like Laili.

Totaling more than US$10,000, the amount collected to help Rais’ widow already counts as one of the highest-netting campaigns on Kitabisa. It overshot its initial goal of raising US$7,619 by 87 percent.

The largest sum collected on the site to date was US$49,793 for a homeless woman suffering from breast cancer.