Word: temby
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...Purser's guiding philosophy is what the British call doing well by doing good: as he enriches himself, he has made it his parallel goal to create a prosperous community of Javanese artisans. Now in his late 50s, Purser says that when he moved to Tembi in 1995, there were no roads and few jobs. "A lot of people had moved away to find work in the cities," he says. When he started Out of Asia, he surveyed the skills of the village's 800 people "with the objective of creating a job for at least one member of every...
...surpassed that goal. Today, Tembi has the cheerful feel of a tropical Victorian Utopia, a model community in the tradition of William Morris, with Purser cast in the role of philosopher-king. Evidence of the village's global reach and newfound affluence are everywhere. Purser says he pays above-average wages, and he established a foundation to distribute some of the profits to the townspeople. Thus far, the foundation has created a health clinic, a gamelan school and a simple fitness center. The company pays for school uniforms and books. After two years of service, an unmarried employee gets...
...Purser's personal ethos is based upon old-fashioned ideals of hard work and country living. On a fine, Monday morning, the women of Tembi gather in a pleasant pavilion in the center of town to construct nested rattan boxes for Marshall Field's, the Chicago-based department store chain. As Purser wanders through a clean-swept clearing sheltered by what he calls a "hugely important" banyan tree, where a member of the royal house of Yogyakarta is buried, residents make way for him with discreet Javanese gestures of respect. "When someone gets married, I'm there. When someone dies...
...life might be rustic, but Purser is hardly deprived. The compound he shares with his daughter, Polly, 29, who is a designer for the firm, rambles like a Sultan's palace, landscaped with pools and pavilions and tended by a large retinue of servants. If there are any in Tembi opposed to the rule of its high-minded foreign potentate, they keep it to themselves. One of the company's foremen, a Tembi native called Daud Subroto, has worked for Purser for seven years. "Before, people in Tembi were only farmers. Now they have good jobs," he says...
...Prosperity brings social stability?just as the boss intended. One of Purser's objectives is to create conditions that will keep young people in the village. "When kids leave for Jakarta to look for work, so often they can't find a job and they get into drugs. In Tembi there are no drugs." He surveys the scene with satisfaction. "Once I realized how much the employment opportunities offered by my business could change people's lives," Purser says, "it became my passion...