Let the children enjoy the world

It is almost midnight here in Ambon, Indonesia. I’m about going to sleep but I realized that I haven’t visited the Mercy Corps Blog today. Since morning I was too busy at the office completing some work and didn't have any chance to do my everyday ritual — reading the blog.

So, late at night here, I took a few minutes to read some of the new entries. And again, I was so impressed how the Mercy Corps Blog can become a powerful medium to present our agency's work to the world.

From some recent entries, I found out that there are at least five contributors who have written on the topic of children. And I am quite interested with what Bija Gutoff has shared in her piece, "Second graders rally around Haitian classmate." It is so amazing how even very young children can express their empathy and take action to help others.

I’m proud of what Mercy Corps has done to support children in Haiti because during disasters, children are the ones who suffer most from trauma and need something to help them heal. It takes time for them to return to some sense of normalcy. And it made me think of some of the work we're doing here in Ambon, involving children in conflict-affected communities.

Our Water and Environmental Sanitation project has taught us that children in Ambon can be great champions and role models who can teach the whole community about the importance of keeping the environment clean and healthy. Mercy Corps has been working here in Ambon for more than ten years now, since the Maluku conflict divided communities along religious lines, displaced thousands of people and traumatized entire families. As in Haiti, we started with emergency response and then shifted into more long-term development programmes. Water and Sanitation is now one of the major aspects of our current programme here, and children are among our most helpful partners in this work.

With funding from UNICEF and Western Union, Mercy Corps helped stage a one-week event here in Ambon, called Festival Pinggir Kali, between February 8-13. Some of the things we focused on during this event were health, sanitation and environmental stewardship. Here are some pictures from the festival, which help illustrate just how involved local children are in our programmes:

These young children demonstrated the importance of washing their hands with soap. They helped teach their classmates and community that clean hands will help keep them from getting preventable illnesses like diarrhoea. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps

Through a colouring competition, Mercy Corps helped encourage children to love and respect their environment. Many of the poor neighborhoods in Ambon where we work are environmentally damaged, with piles of garbage and polluted streams. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps

For older children — those 7 to 9 years old — Mercy Corps sponsored a drawing competition to express their creativity. Through their drawings, children showed what they see around their neighborhood and tried to motivate neighbors to keep their environment clean and healthy. Photo: Dany Bell/Mercy Corps

All of this looks so simple, but it can be very powerful. These children have overcome the trauma of the Maluku conflict and its aftermath, but they still need our support. When we give them that support, they can thrive and become true and creative partners in our work to help neighborhoods and families.

Children in Haiti are still suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake and need our support. Together, let's help them recover and let them enjoy the world.