Obama's Mother Worked for USAID, World Bank, in Indonesia
FrontLines - March 2009
By Ben Barber
Ann Sutoro (left) and her close friend Kay Ikranagara in 1975 at their children’s bilingual play group in Jakarta.
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President Barack Obama's mother, Ann Dunham Sutoro, spent more than 20 years in Indonesia working on a range of development tasks for USAID, the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, and other organizations.
She was an early pioneer in providing microcredits to the poor, and helped bring education to poor children and adults. She also worked to preserve ancient village crafts and improve the lives of women.
"Like me, Ann was a child of the ‘60s who ended up in Indonesia, ready to take up challenges," said Kay Ikranagara in a telephone interview with FrontLines from Jakarta. Sutoro's former colleague and friend now works for the Academy for Educational Development, a USAID contractor.
Sutoro taught English for a development group supported by USAID—the Lembaga Pendidikan Pembinaan Manajemen—which still exists but no longer receives U.S. assistance, said Ikranagara.
Ikranagara and Sutoro bonded through the close friendships formed by their children. They remained close after the children grew up, while sharing the same passion for development.
"She was an earthy person and an anthropologist—at home in the villages. She had a wide variety of friends beside the ex-pats," Ikranagara said.
Sutoro earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii in 1992 but lived mainly in Indonesia from 1967 to 1994. Obama spent about four years in Jakarta before moving back to live with his grandparents in Hawaii.
Sutoro spoke Indonesian or Bahasa and worked with the Ford Foundation as a program officer for women's livelihoods, as well as for the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. She also worked with Bank Rakyat (People's Bank) in Indonesia, getting
them to widen a small loans program for farmers into microloans. The Bank Rakyat program
was one of USAID's most successful projects there.
Richard Patten, a friend and economist, said in a Time magazine
article in April 2008 that Sutoro was largely responsible for the success of that program, which is now "No. 1 in the world in terms of savers, with 31 million members, according to Microfinance Information eXchange Inc., a microfinance-tracking outfit."
On Feb. 5 at the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama cited the profound influence his mother had on his view of life:
"I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing
Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion, even as she was the kindest, most spiritual person I've ever known. She was the one who taught me as a child to love, and to understand, and to do unto others as I would want done," he said.
In his biographical Dreams From My Father published in 1995 and updated in 2004, Obama wrote that "five days a week she came into my room at four in the morning, force-fed me breakfast, and proceeded to teach me English lessons for three hours before I left for school."
Ikranagara noted that the young Obama had a way of making friends.
"He was a plump kid with big ears and very friendly," recalled Ikranagara. "He sat on a wall and flapped his arms like a bird," which made the kids laugh and broke the ice, she said.
Sutoro's anthropology
thesis—excerpts of which have recently been published in Bahasa—explored the blacksmith's
art as well as its business model, said Ikranagara. The entire work is expected to be published in English as a result of the attention created by Obama's presidency. Ancient crafts such as blacksmithing were threatened across Southeast Asia in the 1980s by the influx of mass-produced
cheap products. Plastic replaced wicker, machines replaced hand-woven cloth, and factories produced previously hand-forged metal.
The last time Ikranagara saw Sutoro was 1994, about one year before Sutoro died of cancer.
"One thing that led her into working with women's livelihoods
was her love of textiles," said Ikranagara. "If she were still alive, she would decorate the White House with Indonesian textiles." ★
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