Distribution of necessities to street vendors in the Semarang area (Photo : Bangga Donasi Team).

Semarang – Departing from the anxiety of street vendors (PKL) who experienced a drastic decline in turnover during the pandemic, Bangga Donasi is present as a means of raising funds and allocating basic foodstuffs to be distributed to street vendors affected by Covid-19 in the Semarang area.

Bangga Donasi itself is a social project initiated by Diponegoro University Communication Science students with a focus on activities to help street vendors in Semarang who are economically affected.

“Bangga Donasi itself is an acronym for Help Street Vendors Through Donation, we abbreviate it to Bangga Donasi. It is a collective movement so that people want to donate to help street vendors, especially in the Semarang area which is affected by Covid-19,” explained the head of the Bangga Donasi project, Riesma Laylinisa.

Riesma revealed the results of interviews conducted by the Bangga Donasi team with several street vendors in the Banyumanik area where street vendors during the pandemic admitted that it was very difficult to sell their wares. According to Riesma also, not all street vendors received assistance from the government evenly, so the Bangga Donasi team organized this collective movement.

In practice, Bangga Donasi raises funds by utilizing various social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Then they fill it with interesting content to persuade donors and the wider community to also donate through Bangga Donasi. Donors are also facilitated by a variety of various transfer media, ranging from bank transfers such as Bank Mandiri, BNI, BRI, BTPN, BTN, to e-wallet media such as Ovo, Gopay, Shopee-pay, and Dana.

“So the hope is that the increasing number of transfer services we provide will make it easier for donors to make donations,” said Riesma

Until now, donations of 1.988.000.00 IDR and had successfully implemented 10 basic food packages for street vendors in the Banyumanik area, as well as 25 basic food packages for street vendors in the Cangkiran, Tembalang, and Semarang areas.

Although initially, it was only for college assignments, Bangga Donasi is now gaining success. Unmitigated, Bangga Donasi can collaborate with various news media for publications such as medianasional.id, Solopos, Halo Semarang and others.

“From the implementation of our campaign or distribution to street vendors who get a positive and happy response which is reflected in the looks on the faces of the street vendors. Even one of the balance traders, he is very grateful and happy that there are people who pay attention, especially because this was initiated by young people,” said this sixth-semester student.

Furthermore, Riesma said that the Undip Department of Communication Science itself supports this movement. This was proven by giving criticism, input, and suggestions from Communication Science lecturers so that the social movements he carried out with friends would run even better.

“Lecturers always provide support, input, and suggestions. So our lecturers, Mas Tandiyo, Mas Jojo, and Mbak Ayu are people who support us to give some kind of consideration about how and always provide input on how we should target or choose the right social media, how should we move to maintain tracking of activities this social. Indeed, it is constructive and has a huge impact on how the proud program of donations is going,” concluded Riesma.

Reporter/Writer : Dinda Khansa Berlian / Amelia Nuraini Purnomo

Editor: Dian Rahma Fika Alnina