Activate Talks Indonesia: Highlights

Highlights of UNICEF's Activate Talks event in Indonesia, with Anies Baswedan, Tri Mumpuni, Mia Sutanto, Dr. Ahmad Aziz, and Toshi Nakamura.

Photos: Activate Talks Jakarta, Indonesia

Post by UNICEF Indonesia.

Indonesia celebrates children’s rights with innovative solutions to development challenges

By Sarah Grainger

Anies Baswedan takes quality education to rural Indonesia through a social movement with young people. © UNICEF Indonesia/2014/Harimawan

JAKARTA, 24 April 2014 – UNICEF Indonesia brought together a number of leading innovators at an event in Jakarta’s Erasmus Huis on Wednesday to present their ideas on how to tackle some of the key challenges children continue to face in this booming South-East Asian economy. 

The TED-style event, called ‘ACTIVATE talks’, was part of UNICEF’s celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). UNICEF has also declared 2014 the “Year of Innovations and Equity”.

Remote schools: Inspiring Papua’s children to go the extra mile for education

By Sarah Grainger

Lima, 7, makes a calculation at school in rural Wamena district, Papua.
© UNICEF Indonesia/2014/Andy Brown

Maima Village, Papua province, Indonesia, April 2014 - There’s a chill in the air and the sun is barely up when 8-year-old Tolaka and her sister Lima, 7, leave home for school at 6am. It takes them an hour to walk to class from the thatched hut they share with their mother, close to the banks of the River Baliem, in Papua’s Kurima sub district.

The route takes them over flooded grassland and along woodland tracks sticky with mud to SD Advent Maima primary school.

“I’m used to walking so I don’t get tired at all,” says Tolaka. “I’m happy to come to school. I have a lot of friends here and we like playing and skipping together.”