Giving Street Children Money Won't Help Them. Volunteering Will. (Candice starts writing for the Jakarta Globe)

Candice been invited to blog weekly for Indonesia's largest daily newspaper, the Jakarta Globe on issues relating to street children.

Below is the text of her first blog entry which you can find here: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/talkback/giving-street-children-money-wont-help-them-volunteering-will/503335

Every day when you are on your way to work and held up in a traffic jam, what do you see? Children busking, begging, or working on the streets.

When they look up to you with their big brown eyes, gaunt faces, and grubby hands, it’s so tempting to drop a couple of rupiah into their hand. The unfortunate thing about this solution is that this will never help them. It will make us feel better, because in our minds we think we are helping. But in reality, giving these children money only keeps them on the street. Their parents enjoy the daily income their children bring home and would prefer them on the street rather than at school.

What is a better solution? Volunteering!

In late April 2011 my husband and I quit our jobs in Australia, sold our car and most of the stuff we owned and left the country for the next 13 months to volunteer in Indonesia. My husband was already set to volunteer with the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) while I was awaiting my approval for a volunteer assignment with Sahabat Anak (Child’s Friend).

Why this crazy decision to pack up our lives and spend a year volunteering in Indonesia? Well, quite frankly it came down to the fact that it was something we had always wanted to do. So we applied to volunteer with Australian Volunteers International; AVI partners with local organizations overseas through the work of an Australian volunteer. These activities are also achieved in partnership with AusAID through the delivery of the Australian Volunteers for International Development program.

My husband and I saw the AVI program as an excellent opportunity to give back to a community in our region (that is the Asia Pacific region) while having an adventure of a lifetime. Living in Indonesia was also an opportunity to put all that Bahasa Indonesia I learned at university to the test. I must say speaking Indonesian, in Indonesia, is much harder than speaking it at university in Australia. What is with all the slang?

I am now volunteering full time at Sahabat Anak as a Public Relations Officer. Sahabat Anak is a non-profit organization which provides quality education and children’s rights advocacy in an effort to encourage and inspire Jakarta’s street children to escape urban poverty. It is an organization and a movement started by volunteers and is still driven by volunteers today — there are only six full time staff and over 120 volunteers. Some of the volunteers at Sahabat Anak have been doing this for over 10 years. Their commitment is simply inspirational.

My office is in a rented house and we share the space with Sahabat Anak’s Children’s Activity Center, which is an informal school for street teens. Sahabat Anak also has eight tutorial classes throughout Jakarta. Mostly local volunteers living in Jakarta volunteer their weekends to provide free tutorial classes for children from marginalized and street communities. They teach the children arithmetic, literacy, science, music, dance, art, and much more.

At present, we are waiting for our new office building (which will also house the Children’s Activity Center) to be completed. For now, the roof in the rented house leaks, the office floods during heavy downpours and rats frequently run by, which makes me jump out of my skin. But all I can say is, I love it.

I love seeing the passion that my colleagues have for children’s rights, despite their working conditions. I love saying hello to the children at the Children’s Activity Center and eating lunch with them. I love the public relations work I do, which involves promoting the organization on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. And I love meeting all the wonderful individuals, donors, and organizations who partner with Sahabat Anak and who sincerely care about seeing marginalized children in Jakarta achieve their dreams.

But volunteering does not have to send you overseas, you can do it too wherever you are. All it takes is a couple of hours a week. You can volunteer with children rights, environmental, animal welfare or human rights organizations, or old people’s homes or orphanages. It can be anything that interests you or that you feel passionate about.

Volunteering is extremely rewarding. At times it will completely tire you out, and at other times you will feel completely invigorated because whoever you are working with has succeeded. Live a little and give your time to help those who need it. You won’t be disappointed.

For more information on Sahabat Anak, visit www.sahabatanak.com.

Goodbye Australia, hello Indonesia!

Firstly we thought we’d give you guys a bit of information about what we’re doing in Indonesia. About 3 years ago we did a stint of living in Sweden and doing some travel around the world. When we got back to Australia and returned to normality we felt that living abroad had really given us the desire to do work overseas. We discovered Australian Volunteers International (AVI), one of a few government-sponsored organisations that pairs skilled volunteers with local partner organisations in various developing and underdeveloped countries around the world, primarily in our immediate region. Given Indonesia’s proximity to Australia and the fact that we both speak Bahasa Indonesia it was an obvious choice, the other being Timor Leste. We both set about applying for suitable volunteer positions in both countries.

After a lengthy application and screening process and some hiccups along the way, I (Nat) finally secured a position as a research editor at an Indonesian women’s rights organisation called Komisi Anti-Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan (National Commission for Anti-Violence Against Women) or “Komnas Perempuan” for short. Indonesians absolutely love their acronyms. Given the position will involve utilising legal, research and translation skills I’m hoping my background as a lawyer and ability to speak Bahasa come in handy. Candice is still in the process of firming up the details of her position and we don’t yet know how that will pan out. We’ll keep you up to date when we know more.

The flight from Melbourne to Jakarta via Sydney was relatively uneventful and really the first time I felt really excited about moving to Indonesia. It was the first time either of us had flown Garuda and despite the bad reputation of the airline, we were pleasantly surprised to find the service excellent. Apparently they have really picked up in recent years. The picture above is actually us on the train to Yogyakarta not the plane but we thought it looked appropriate.

Jakarta airport looked very 1980s and we could already sense the humidity outside as we got off the plane. Jon, our AVI in-country manager was there to meet us with his team and they took us to our hotel for the first few days.

This intake of AVI volunteers in Indonesia comprises seven people – Candice and I, Horst and Alice, Dennis and Deborah, and Jen. Jen, Dennis and Deborah are stationed in Bali while the rest of us are in Jakarta. The first four days or so were spent mainly at the AVI office in Jakarta spent doing our orientation with briefings from local organisations, AVI, the Australian Embassy doctor, AusAid and really just getting set up. We didn’t see much of Jakarta except the traffic. It was almost quicker to walk from our hotel to the AVI office than to drive. In fact on a couple of occasions it would have been!

A layer of smog covers Jakarta most of the time

In terms of population, greater Jakarta is the second largest city in the world after Mexico City. The greater urban area is made up of about 26 million people, half of which commute in and out of the city centre daily. That’s more than the entire population of Australia moving around an area smaller than Melbourne. And it’s getting bigger! The infrastructure can hardly cope with the traffic and we reckon if most people didn’t get around on scooters, there would be no way the roads could accommodate that many cars.

There is an ever-present smog in the air (which we could see from the plane) that prevents you from ever seeing the sky or the stars and there are no footpaths. Having spent a lot of time in South East Asia, and in particular Malaysia, we had expected Jakarta to be similar to Kuala Lumpur given the similarities in language, history and culture between the two nations. We were quite surprised to discover how much poorer and underdeveloped Jakarta is in general despite the opulent wealth displayed by some people here and the hundreds of shopping malls.

Having said all that Jakarta is quite green and the people are very friendly and helpful. We don’t feel as if it is as dangerous as many other countries and violent crime is quite low.

Apart from Jon, the AVI staff based here are entirely Indonesian. Nova, Tuti, Slamet and Aurora were extremely helpful and went out of their way to help us settle in. We’ve now got Indonesian mobiles so send us an email if you want our numbers. It’s cheaper for us to call you though!

These are only our initial perceptions of Jakarta. I'm sure our opinion will change as we get to know our new home! We'll post another update shortly as we're actually already in Yogyakarta for language training as we write this.