Today we started with a visit to a high school where we met with the headmaster and sat in on a class where Renvi from Save the Children was teaching 16-year-old boys and girls about Child Labor issues. There are approximately 700,000 hired domestic workers in Indonesia. The school is a technical high school, which does more training than “formal education.” The girls and boys from higher socioeconomic class go to more academic/formal high schools. Only 10% of the students are girls. All the students wear uniforms and half the girls are wearing the Muslim headscarves and covered from head to toe, sitting in a sweltering gym. No one is eating or drinking water from 6am-6pm because of Ramadan. We asked them about what they thought were the contributing factors to the high incident of child labor and their answers were very insightful.

Renvi instructing high school students in Lampung.

Our next two visits were with LADA and Child Crisis Center (3C’s). Lada provides counseling along with health and transitional education. At 3C’s we were joined by 14 people and discussed the high incident of pregnancy and the lack of reproductive health education. One of the counselors from 3C’s started the community radio concept in 2005. The program is called Voice of the City.
They also stressed the importance of finding economic development opportunities.

Lada visit. Partner NGO with Save the Children

The area we are visiting is pretty challenging with the traffic congestion and tremendous number of people on the roads. Street vendors are everywhere. One man was traveling on a motorcycle with a dead chicken dangling from one hand. I also saw a mom and dad and two children riding together on a motorcycle.