Mobile Health Pilot Boosting Immunization in Urban Java

By Cory Rogers, Communication Officer

Karin Hulshof wipes a tear away from a child who will soon receive a health checkup at a local health post in West Jakarta. © Cory Rogers / UNICEF / 2017  

The line curls out of the door and into the alley, where dozens of mothers stand patiently, cradling newborns under an early morning drizzle.

“I’ll wait for the line to thin out and take my baby in later,” Eka* told UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific (EAPRO) Regional Director Karin Hulshof in her doorstep during Karin’s visit to Indonesia last week, her first as EAPRO Regional Director.

Like other young mothers in this West Jakarta slum, Eka looks forward to the opening of the posyandu (community-level health post) each month. “The difference is I’m not so eager to get wet,” she laughed.

Planting PAUD Hope in Papua

By: Cory Rogers, Communication Officer

 

Sorong, Papua Province, Indonesia -  Just 15 minutes east of the Sorong port sits STIKP Muhammadiyah Sorong, a serene teacher’s college awash in the blues of the sea.

Between two mid-campus ponds, Herman, a third-semester student at the college, winces as he relays an early school memory.
 
“We often didn’t even have paper to use [at school],” he says, one hand twirling pen strokes, the other scratching an ear. “So we took notes on our thighs instead.”
 
Peers were left to wonder: How many words even fit on a five-year-old’s knee?
 
“I want to return home after graduating [to teach],” Herman continued. “You know, half the time, the teacher didn’t even bother to show up.”

A City Belongs to Children: How Surakarta Establishes Its Trademark as a Child-Friendly City

By: Kinanti Pinta Karana, UNICEF Indonesia Communication Specialist

From left to right: UNICEF Indonesia Representative Gunilla Olsson, the Mayor of Surakarta Hadi ‘Rudy’ Rudyatmo and the UN Special Representative of the Secretary General Marta Santos Pais Photo ©UNICEF Indonesia/Kinanti Pinta Karana

Surakarta in central Java, earns a lot of praise for its commitment to put children at the centre of its policies. The city has been in a partnership with UNICEF since 2002 to improve child protection, with birth registration as a priority. In 2015, Surakarta received the Child Friendly City Award from President Joko Widodo, the city’s former mayor. In the last days of February, the UN Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG) for Violence against Children, Marta Santos Pais paid the city a visit along with several UNICEF staff including Representative Gunilla Olsson, to see how things are being done.

From Youth to Youth: Creating Change-Makers to End Violence against Children

By Melania Niken Larasati, Child Protection Officer


Makassar workshop participants vow to end violence against children


Jakarta: “Physical violence is not a violation of human rights as long as it serves a higher purpose.”

At the statement, the audience began to shift uncomfortably, as did I: I wondered, if such a view could be so casually stated here in Makassar – at a workshop aimed at eliminating violence against children (VAC) -- how widespread was it among youth?

Pushing for better early education in North Lombok

By Cory Rogers, Communication Officer

 

 

Children climb at the PAUD Banu Manaf playground in Terujuk Village, North Lombok

North Lombok: Few preschools or kindergartens (PAUD) in Indonesia boast a slide, a swing and a basketball hoop. Fewer still keep them inside. 

"We had to move all that indoors to keep it safe from adults," said Ibu Lastri, principal at Terpadu PAUD in northwest Lombok, a Muslim-majority island just east of Bali.

A library of children’s books abuts
a slide in a classroom at PAUD Terpadu

"I guess they didn't have access to these things when they were kids!" she laughed.