ARLECT

ARLECT 2024 — This year's retreat takes place in Yogyakarta, the south-central region of the Indonesian island of Java. It is an area renowned for its culture, scenic beauty and spectacular heritage sites.

The key focus of the 5-day programme will be to explore the astounding success of the community cooperative enterprise, TAMZIS and the thriving ecosystem it has generated.

TAMZIS is arguably one of the most successful yet least-known interest-free banking and community co-op welfare systems in the Muslim world. The businesses embedded within the TAMZIS network range from the macro to the micro: from hotel complexes, city hospitals, universities and schools, right down to the community wet markets and stall holders. Together, these enterprises constitute the diverse socio-economic ecosystems of the communities served and supported by TAMZIS through deposits, investments, and proactive charitable giving, as well as support through recirculated and reinvested profits generated by businesses. (See below for more details on TAMZIS.)

Presentation and interactive discussions will be facilitated by senior members of the TAMZIS executive team, including their founding chairman, Ir. H. Saat Suharto. Participants will gain practical wisdom, insights, and knowledge of developmental history, along with the structural and legal aspects of how the BMT cooperative movement has developed and progressed over three decades to serve, fund, and grow the socio-economic base of local communities within Indonesia.

Curated visits to local members of the TAMZIS Cooperative will showcase the cooperative's business and operational strategies, providing first-hand experience of how they apply the Principles and Practices of the Islamic Gift Economy to create flourishing Communities of Right Livelihood for the Common Good.

No ARLECT retreat is complete without immersion into the best of the retreat location's culture, history, and hospitality. The program includes an array of exceptional excursions to nearby places of cultural, historical, and scenic significance.

ARLECT 2024 aims to connect like-minded individuals with shared concerns for building socioeconomically vibrant communities through mobilising and structuring resources for community self-funding. From small-scale individual enterprises to big-scale community socio-economic ecosystems, participants will experience what amounts to a living, breathing, tried-and-tested model for securing the socio-economic well-being of communities.

"Befriend and work closely with people involved in the growing global counter-economies movement. Creatively apply the strategies and structures they have successfully used for the pursuit of good work, right livelihoods and the common good." — PEARL Essentials Course: Module 8

TAMZIS also known as Tamzis Bina Utama Shari‘ah Cooperative for Savings, Loans and Financings is today  a nationwide Islamic cooperative organisation, having developed hundreds of community-supported enterprises and servicing a diverse range of social welfare, economic and banking needs of its members throughout Indonesia.

TAMZIS itself was born out of the Indonesian cooperative movement and started as a a Baitul Maal organisation focused on social activities and non-profit efforts to collect and distribute funds, such as zakat, infaq and sadaqah. 

From humble beginnings in 1992, TAMZIS now has 198,000 members, 51 offices, and over 57m USD Assets, 47.9m USD Deposits and 49.5m USD Outstanding Finance.

The development of the cooperative started as a Baitul Maal organisation focused on social activities and non-profit efforts to collect and distribute funds, such as zakat, infaq and sadaqah. 

Later the Baitul Tamwil activities were added, namely the business activities directed towards applying funds for mutual profitable gains. These two divisions together are often referred to as BMT (Baitul Mal Wat Tamwil). TAMZIS integrates these social and commercial divisions often innovative synergies. 

TAMZIS firmly believes that well-managed cooperatives are a sure way to establish financial security for the common person and can be a key driver for the Indonesian economy. They believe their business success is due to their ethical-moral principles and practices, along with creative innovation and strategic modernisation of governance and management in line with appropriate, relevant advances in the current business environment and technology, all of which are firmly guided by applied Islamic intellectual-moral values.

Throughout the retreat, participants will have ample opportunity to immerse themselves in the dynamic socio-economic lifeworld of TAMZIS, providing the ideal setting to explore how these models can be creatively applied to support the revitalisation and sustainability of social and commercial enterprises in their own local communities.

“The example of those who spend their wealth in the way of God is like a seed [of grain] which grows seven spikes; in each spike is a hundred grains. And God multiplies [His reward] for whom He wills. And God is all-Encompassing and Knowing.” [Quran 2:261]