Fourteen ways the world changed today

Photo: Awanda Sentosa/Mercy Corps

I have rarely been as inspired as I am right now. Today, our 14 workshop students presented their photographs and written stories to the group. I am awed by what I saw and heard.

Over the course of just a few hours on a thickly humid day in the middle of Jakarta, one of the world's biggest cities, 14 Mercy Corps Indonesia staffers captured the spirit and struggle of a neighborhood. Most of them had never been trained in journalism. Many of them had neither conducted interviews nor distilled those findings into a story.

But today, I saw the world change in 14 ways. These workshop students — who come from all across Indonesia — have become powerful storytellers and nonprofit journalists in their own right.

For much of the day, Thatcher and I sat down alongside our students and collaboratively helped them edit their stories and photographs. In each piece, we saw passion and concern. We saw the deep desire — the need — to take what they'd heard and witnessed and communicate it to the world outside of Penjaringan, the slum neighborhood where we met so many people yesterday. Our students had made these conversations, these lessons about life's horrors and joys and triumphs, their own and were so determined to stay true to those who'd trusted them with their stories.

Photo: Farahdibh Tenrilemba/Mercy Corps

Hundreds of photographs were culled to a few dozen stirring images. Written stories went under the red editor's pen. And then each student read and showed their work to the whole group.

We saw pictures that captured the feelings of a place where there are no easy answers. We heard stories with memorable, heroic characters. Together, we began to create a deep map of Jakarta's biggest, poorest slum.

Because of today, I will always remember a 13-year-old boy named Rizki who lives in a wheelchair in a narrow alleyway. A middle-aged man who spins sugar into superheroes. A woman who supports her family by creating handicrafts from discarded drinking straws.

As the day ended, after gales and applause and warm encouraging words for each other, we disbanded and turned off the lights to the room where we'd done — and learned — so much together. It was melancholy for me to see them leave, but so empowering.

I know that tomorrow, these fourteen storytellers will awake and go out into Indonesia's thousands of villages. The words and images they bring back will inspire others and rouse them to action.