Community Empowerment in the Time of the Covid-19 Pandemic through Strengthening MSMEs in East Java

ABSTRACT: People's economic empowerment is an effort to create a strong, large, modern, and highly competitive economy in the correct market mechanism. Because the obstacles to people's economic development are structural constraints, the empowerment of the people's economy must be carried out through structural changes. The Covid-19 pandemic has hit many countries, including Indonesia. Covid-19 has had an impact on various sectors including Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), including the decline in the number of sales. This research method uses a qualitative descriptive approach. This research uses a case study approach, which is an empirical inquiry that investigates phenomena in real-life contexts, where the boundaries between phenomena and contexts are not clear, and there are multiple sources of evidence. The results of the research are that business actors seek to find marketing and sales alternatives, secure capital and assets, temporarily transfer them to other businesses, and must learn technologies that are considered effective for promotion and sales