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Tsunami Relief

Partners

CMC’s activity: creative drawing as a trauma healing tool for children. Photo: CMC

Children’s Media Center
As its name indicates, the Children’s Media Center (CMC) focuses on the rights and welfare of children. CMC has developed a niche by using the media to connect with children.

Before the tsunami, individuals from CMC used this approach to highlight the plight of children caught in the middle of the decades-long conflict in Aceh. After the tsunami, they focused on gathering the stories of child victims and helping them heal from the trauma through creative expression. By gathering and sharing traditional stories, beliefs, and aspects of their culture, CMC is helping the children understand themselves and their culture. In this way, they are also rebuilding the children’s sense of community, which has been lost due to conflict and disaster.

One means of sharing the children’s stories is through a children’s magazine called Bintang Ubiet (Acehnese for “Little Star”) in which children in Thailand wrote letters to children survivors of the tsunami. With AFSC’s support, CMC has also published four books titled Aneuk Atjeh Lam Duka (Aceh Children in Grief). They contain profiles of hundreds of Aceh orphans who are victims of the tsunami/conflict.

Children of tsunami victims participating in FPRM’s alternative education. Photo: Krisetya

Forum Peduli Rakyat Miskin  (FPRM)
 The English translation of this NGO is “Care for the Poor Forum”. AFSC’s partnership with FPRM has focused on providing children with extracurricular (non-formal) study activities. This has been a valuable way for traumatized children to gain back their confidence and basic education skills. These activities have also helped the children enhance their social skills.

For example, through this program FPRM realized that some of the children tended to be disruptive and difficult because they felt lonely. Volunteers visited with the children’s families and helped them understand how to give positive encouragement and attention to their children as a way to improve their feelings of self worth.

Women learning new skills, assisted by LPSELH. Photo: Krisetya

LPSELH (Lembaga Pembangunan Sosial, Ekonomi dan Lingkungan Hidup)
This organization (English translation: Institute of Social, Economic, and Environmental Development) has been working since the early 90s to better the situation of women in North Aceh. They have especially focused on environmental issues as they relate to the economic empowerment of women. LPSELH helps women organize themselves, learn practical skills, and support each other. They also work to ensure that indigenous knowledge is promoted as means of empowerment.

LPSELH itself has been deeply affected by the tsunami. Two of the group’s staff members died in the tsunami and five others were hired away by international NGOs to work on emergency programs. LPSELH, like the women they serve, has struggled during the recovery process. They have had to contend with the dramatic changes that have occurred in Aceh as a result of the tremendous international interest, as well as the end of the long conflict between GAM (English translation: Free Aceh Movement) and the Indonesian military. They note that, “We feel that it is of increasing importance in a post-conflict situation to raise awareness in the community about strengthening the local economy, gender equality, environmental conservation, and cultural approaches toward conflict resolution.”

A SHEEP staff member with teenagers making handicraft in a post-earthquake village in Yogyakarta. Photo: Dyah Widiastuti

Society for Health, Education, Environment and Peace (SHEEP)
SHEEP is a Yogyakarta-based organization that has helped AFSC make connections with local NGOs in Aceh, and has been a key partner in the distribution of emergency aid in the aftermath of the tsunami.  SHEEP’s primary goal is to empower groups or communities who have little or no access to basic services such as education and healthcare. SHEEP believes that peace is almost impossible to achieve without making a deliberate effort to improve marginalized people’s access and rights to receive essential services.

SHEEP’s emergency work has focused on providing medical care and supplies to thousands of victims as well as clean water and sanitation facilities. The group also supports basic economic development activities and has helped with housing reconstruction and social services for victims of the earthquake in Yogyakarta in 2006.

Now they are exploring how to continue serving and strengthening the communities to which they’ve provided emergency services, with a special focus on comprehensive community healthcare.

Children in a fishing village assisted by YSKD. Photo: Krisetya

Yayasan Sinar Kasih Desa (YSKD), Village Ray of Love Foundation
AFSC’s work with this partner centers on a fishing village located on a small island in northern Sumatra. The tsunami washed away all their boats and fishing equipment, virtually destroying residents’ livelihoods. YSKD has helped villagers form two fishing cooperatives and a crabbing cooperative. This has allowed the villagers to work together to increase their income.

YSKD has also supported the formation of a kindergarten to better prepare children for school. This has become a forum to introduce ideas about how to preserve the health of all people in the village, especially women and children. They have supported environmental health advocacy through the formation of a network of health volunteers, and they have helped build trash collecting/burning units and public bathrooms. In addition, the group has distributed brochures and helped with educational campaigns on health issues.

YSKD also helped AFSC distribute resources such as rice, sugar, cooking oil, and tents after the earthquake in Yogyakarta in 2006.

Children attending a religious studies class in Dayah An-Nur. Photo: Krisetya

Dayah An-Nur Alziziyah (An Nur Aaliyah Boarding School)
In addition to its work with local community development NGOs, AFSC supports an informal religious school known as a “Dayah”. This school is in East Aceh, the part of Aceh that was most heavily affected by the fighting between GAM and the Indonesian military. AFSC is helping the Dayah develop a boarding school that provides children who are victims of the tsunami and the regional conflict with a safe learning environment. In this safe place they can gain traditional religious education, receive psycho-social support, and do productive activities that address their specific needs.

The Dayah’s focus is to provide educational support to those children most affected by the tsunami and long-term conflict in the area, since the total number of child victims far exceeds the amount of help they can provide. Thus, the Dayah has surveyed the sub-district and selected students that are most in need of the type of support and care they can provide.

A meeting hall built by a local NGO in partnership with AFSC. Photo: Monica Espinoza

Aceh Concern for Humanity (ACH)
This organization was formed by a group of volunteers in direct response to the tsunami disaster in Aceh. They initially focused on managing five emergency distribution posts in North Aceh. When the emergency relief work began to decrease, ACH decided to change its focus from emergency activities to longer-term development work.

As ACH was reevaluating its program focus, staff members discovered that there was a group of people with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) in the area. These people had been isolated from their home villages since 1971, and they have received little care and support. After seeing their plight, ACH staff decided to offer them assistance.

With support from AFSC and others, ACH obtained technical assistance from a Jakarta-based public health organization that helped them address the medical and social consequences of Hansen’s Disease in the community. They have successfully provided medical care, counseling, awareness-raising to non-infected persons, and support with housing and income generating projects. Their success is evident in the increased interaction of the affected village with other communities and, significantly, the marriage of several cured individuals with people outside the village.

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