KDM & Happy Angels 1st Joint Education Project - Apr 2006

Kampus Diakoneia Modern (KDM) was started in January 1972 by Mr Liem Tiong Sien and has since helped 10,000 street children aged 2 to 18 years old. KDM has 5 transit houses in Jakarta, Indonesia; a dormitory cum training school in Pondok Gede and a farming training centre in Cileungsi,West Java. Currently, there are about 120 children undergoing academic and skills development courses.

The three major objectives of KDM are:

1. To provide shelter and friendship to the street children 2. To mould and educate them 3. To help the children to be independent

In order to achieve its objectives, KDM has created:

A Befriender program was introduced, where every night, volunteers will talk to the children, giving them advice and help as a friend. There would also be activities every weekend, such as lessons on drawing & spelling. In addition, birthday parties would be held every 3 months for the children. Such a program is currently serving 400 street children.

A center with 2 training schools, where education and information on training & development would be provided for the children. The older children would receive vocational training in skills such as farming and car/motorbike repairs. One-to-one counseling would also be provided to aid in the children’s development and to bring out the best in them. So far, these programs have yielded a success rate of 80 %.

There are currently about 30 000 street children in Jakarta. They arrived from various parts of Indonesia. Most of them illegally hopped onto public transportation like trains, ferries or trucks and make their way to Jakarta. Sadly, some of them did not make it to their destination due to hunger or accidents.

KDM volunteers patrol the streets of Jakarta and counsel these children, advising them to return to their home. As most of the children fled their homes without any forms of identification, it was difficult to trace their origin. Most of the children had serious family problems such as being abused by step-parents or molestation. Therefore they refused to return home despite the hardships suffered on the streets.

The streets offered the children both a place to sleep and a place to work. The children earned a living by begging or doing odd-jobs. However, the streets also enticed them into a darker world of alcoholic drinks, drugs and glue-sniffing, a world where they could escape from the realities of life. This however became a vicious cycle as the children turned to a life of crime in order to get money to fuel their ‘escapades’.

Some children however went to Jakarta in order to get money to help family members, as in the case of 14 yr-old Asep, who needed money to pay for his younger brother’s operation. He was unfortunately forced into prostitution and was sodomized. He felt so sad and ashamed of himself as he had lost his self-esteem totally.

For these poor and forsaken children, KDM has given them a ray of hope and an opportunity to get them off the streets. However, KDM needs additional help and dedicated volunteers, and hence a collaboration with Happy Angels.

In this joint community service with KDM, Happy Angels sent 23 volunteers to Cileungsi, Indonesia in a 4-day education program. The objectives of the project were:

• to teach the children basic English • to educate them on first aid and personal hygiene • to educate them on personal etiquette • to motivate and encourage the children through outward-bound programs on trust & team-building

The aim of the project is to boost the confidence level and raise the self-esteem of the children. Through this program the children also learn the different cultures from people of other countries.