05 Dec #imapiece trip to Indonesia
Indonesia Nov 2012
As most of you know, last month, Deadly Knitshade, Mr X Stitch, Hilary Pullen from UK Craft Blog and I visited Indonesia with Save the Children for the Craftivist Jigsaw #imapiece project. I created 3 vlogs whilst on the trip as well as tweeted and instagrammed whilst there if you wana check ’em out.
Our aim was to visit Save the Children projects in Indonesia to understand how hunger and malnutrition is being tackled in one area (through aid, company funds, government and charity work) working with and through local communities and make us think about what we can do as global citizens in the UK to campaign for a Race Against Hunger. We had a hectic three days in the Bener Meriah region of Indonesia, visiting schools, health centres and farming cooperatives and interviewing local people. It was a really insightful trip for all of us. Photo above is the Crafty Avengers at a local health centre for families with children under 5. Parent’s learn about the benefits and techniques of breastfeeding, healthy eating and children get checked for sickness and vaccination needs.
The very brainy and hard working Indonesian staff of Save the Children explaining their roles to us & what projects we were going to see.
We saw so many brilliant sustainable small scale projects that were really improving the lives of children and their communities it’s hard to write a small concise blog about all we have seen. My brain is also whizzing around with thoughts on what we can all learn from these small projects, people involved and how aid and campaigning really does make a difference. I’m going to spread my thoughts over a few posts so not to bore you now with everything and I’m keen to get your feedback and thoughts too (please). In the meantime check out my 3 vlogs here
For now, I thought I’d share a few pictures with you, to help set the scene and show you the people and places we visited. You can see more photos on my Flickr Set here
Photo on the left is of a cooking class for mothers in a host mothers home.
Hopefully these pictures give you a little insight into the brilliant projects we saw that were really making longterm sustainable positive differences for the communities engaged in them. It was hard at first for us to understand why 30% of kids in Indonesia are malnourished (with so much healthy fruit and veg around, a thriving coffee industry & good roads for transport amongst other things) but after talking to lots of people and the Save the Children staff it seemed that many of the root causes where (to name a few) lack of education on healthy eating and cooking (like Jamie Oliver would say in the UK and USA), coffee farmers not being paid enough to buy healthy food for the families & sometimes taking their children out of school at harvest time to help on the farm, cultural issues like not using their animals for anything more than food (like using the milk, and waste for compost) as well as (again, like in the UK) people not feeling that they have the skill or belief that they can be the change they wish to see in the world.
A community run goat farm with goats used for milk, manure, meat and offspring sold on the local market.
I want to do some blog posts on (jigsaw) pieces of the solution to child malnutrition in Indonesia which I’m hoping will get us all thinking about the solutions in other parts of the world and what we can all do to be part of the solution too. Some blog pieces will probably be on:
- education,
- self belief,
- cultural shift
- and small scale farming.
Scene from a local market- lady selling her vegtables
There will be themes I miss out but I’m only human and still learning and forming my thoughts so bear with me 🙂 x
Scene from a primary school -the girls are practicing a dance for a competition, the boys were playing on the swings. They have a healthy eating canteen as well as learn about food as part of their education.
Written by Sarah Corbett
Sue Lines
Posted at 14:59h, 15 DecemberTruly inspiring! Trying to sneak craftivism into y Transition Town group! Keep it up!!!! You are inspirational.