The last two weeks I have had the opportunity to host an amazing team of girls from Australia who came to teach English for a week at one of our Partners for Compassion sponsored schools. After talking with them, the importance of our education programs and the importance of what we do really hit me in a new way, and I want to share a few of my musings with you….

Education. Education is a part of life that we generally take for granted. It is a part of our childhood that we may have loved or hated—but never questioned it being a part of our lives.

Imagine a life where education is a luxury and not a basic necessity. Imagine a life where having a middle school education is a milestone achievement. Imagine not having the option to go to school, not because you don’t want to, but because the cost for registration and books is more money than your family can afford.

Education is not supposed to be a privilege or a luxury…it should be a basic part of life. I believe that is why our schools are so important. We provide the best education we can to students who would otherwise not be in school. By investing in the next generation—equipping them to be thoughtful and productive citizens—we can change a generation and maybe even a whole nation.

What better gift can we give a child than a quality education? We may not be able to change the whole world…but we can impact the one. And that one may just be the one who changes the world.

I believe that if we say that we love, than there should be an action that follows. Because to love is to do. Love is a VERB.

After months of preparation and planning, and against all odds, our weekly free medical clinic in the trash dump community is now open!!!!

We tried to open the clinic a few months ago, but had to relocate due to issues with the landlord. Then once we moved and we were going to open, the flooding season started, which meant our clinic building was under water, so that delayed the opening again. But now that the rainy season is almost over, we decided to just go ahead and open it now.

The reason we have a clinic in this community is that there is no access to medical care for them within a reasonable distance. The closest clinic they could go to is 5km away. Though this may not seem that far to most people, when it costs them almost a day’s wage to get there, they just cannot afford to go…especially when they have had previously bad experiences there so they feel they might not even get the help they need if they do spend the money to go.

The day of our clinic opening I was a little nervous. How would the community receive us? Would we have any patients? Would we have too many patients that we couldn’t handle the volume?

I arrived ahead of the midwife and got a chance to talk to our community partners a little about the clinic. My language is still quite limited, so our conversation was very basic, but we were able to understand each other enough to figure out some final details. A little bit later, the midwife arrived. The only problem was there were no patients yet…

Instead of just sitting around and waiting for patients to arrive, we all got to work sorting through medicine donations to see what was expired and what could be used. We worked quite efficiently as a team and before we knew it, we were done!

A little bit after we finished sorting through the medicines, the patients started arriving.

Our first patient was a little boy who had been having diarrhea for over a month with bleeding.

I cannot imagine being four years old and being continually sick for that long. I am so glad our midwife was there and was able to help him. Though she saw many other patients with all sorts of problems that day, the young boy stood out to me as why we are there in the first place. People shouldn’t have to live in sickness, especially children. They should be learning, playing, and growing strong and healthy—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

I know that the clinic cannot solve all of the medical problems in the community. But you have to start somewhere, and this is our first step. I am excited to see the impact on the community for years to come and how we continue to develop our strategy for better health for the Cilincing trash dump community

Two Saturdays ago I was able to plan and facilitate my first community health seminar!

For the past six or seven months I have really been feeling that health education area of health that Partners for Compassion should focus on, as Jakarta’s health services have been getting better. Plus health education is very relational and long-term, which suits our model of operation really well.

A couple months ago I met with our community partners in North Jakarta and asked them if they would want us to offer health seminars and they said they would love it! I was able to find an awesome doctor from my church who volunteered her time to teach a class on first aid in the community. We spent time planning and preparing  and coordinating with the various parties involved and set the date for Saturday, November 21.

While preparing the logistics for the event, I learned an interesting cultural fact. Apparently when women attend this kind of event it’s expected that they get “simbako” which is a package of rice, oil, sugar, and instant noodles that they can take home with them to their families. Though the concept was a little weird to meet at first, I jumped on board and went to the store to buy all the stuff. While I was loading up my card with 35 packages of 1KG of sugar one of the ladies passing me asked if I was opening a little store. I laughed and told her no, that I was making simbako packages for one of our communities. It kind of felt like I was opening a store, though, as I had never in my life bought so much food at one time before.

At home my roommate, Korry and I put on a Christmas movie and packed everything up into 35 simbako bags.

On the day of the seminar I was so nervous. What if something went wrong? What if the doctor had a terrible time and never wanted to help again? What if the moms hated it and our relationship doing health education was closed forever? What if our partner thought it was a disaster? Though the thoughts were all slightly irrational, I was a bit apprehensive. But the event could not have possibly gone any better.

I was able to open the seminar with my first speech fully given in Indonesian! Though it was just a simple greeting and thank you to the various people who helped, it still felt like such an accomplishment to get to say it all in Indonesian without a translator.

Doctor Elva did a fantastic job teaching. She was funny and interactive and all the moms were on the edges of their seats listening to what she was saying and fully participating in her interactive portions. At one point one of the moms had to get up and blocked the projected and she was immediately told to sit down by the other ladies because they all couldn’t see around her. Even after the seminar they spent about 15 extra minutes asking various follow up questions.

I could not have asked for it to go any better. I am so excited about continuing to expand our health education program!

Taking volunteers to the communities where I work is one of my favorite parts of my job. This last outreach event was particularly fun because I got to take a group of 15 teenagers in addition to our amazing regular adult volunteers!

Right before we take groups to the community you can just feel the excitement of everyone– particularly the first-times (which we had a lot of this time around). Before we left for the field, Lew gave them a brief overview on the community, what we did there, and general guidelines for the day. Then I got to give the volunteers a short overview of what they would be doing and explaining how we would break up into different smaller teams once we were there.

After that, we got on the bus and headed to the trash dump community!

The tone was set right away as we got off the bus in the community and were immediately greeted by some of our kindergarten students in their uniforms, waiting at the door shaking our hands and greeting us.

The clinic was as usual a huge success. The community members do not have adequate access to health care facilities nearby, so the fact that we would come and provide them with free care is always amazing to them.

I think my favorite part of the day in the community was the different games that we had the teen volunteers and kids play together. Though all of our games were fun, my two favorites were the relay race and the balloon dance competition.

For the relay race each team had four kids and three teen volunteers. Each participant had a plastic spoon in their mouth, which they had to use to transfer a kelengkeng (kind of like a small lime) from each spoon to the next all the way to end of the line and then back. Now, the community has one small dirt road and shacks on either side, so we had to play on the road. So as the kids and teens were trying their best to transfer the kelengkeng trash trucks and other vehicles were coming by and we would have to temporarily stop and start back up. You would think that they would have been frustrated by that, but it just added to the competitive nature of the game to have to run back to position after getting out of the way of the trucks. It was hilarious to watch and I think the kids (and teens for that matter) really loved it.

My second favorite game was the balloon dance competition. By this point the kids all knew who their teen partner was, so we had them run to find their partner (since we had just come back from a short lunch break). The kids were so excited and jumped up and ran as fast as they could to get their “teen.” The goal of the game was to see who could dance the best with their partner without dropping the balloon that was between the kid and the volunteer. At the end of each round whoever got the loudest applause won. The kids and volunteers really got into it and it was absolutely hilarious and fun.

In addition to the fun of the activities themselves, it was also really great to see some of the ladies and kids that I had met and chatted with on previous visits to the community.

 I am always amazed and humbled that I get to work with such an incredible team and that I get to go to such amazing people in the community.