13 November 2012

The Street Kids of Jakarta



















These special children (above) were first discovered on the garbage dumps in Jakarta. They were collecting waste materials and selling them to companies, who used the waste to manufacture all types of bags, wallets, travel tags and computer covers and sell them on to shops and distributors both within Indonesia and internationally.

The British International School (BIS) discovered the kids and raised funds to build a school for them. (See the article here). Many of the children, some of which are orphans who live around the dump, now attend school and I was asked to conduct a special creativity workshop for them, while working at the BIS in Jakarta. These youngsters who ranged in age from about six to twelve, were highly talented and like all children, they loved to play. We began with simple Brain Gym® exercises to get them focused and into 'creative' mode and soon we were constructing simple paper puppets and performing short scenes from stories which they chose.
 I rarely get to do such pure work in Australia and the experience of working with raw talent, such as this, was an absolute treat for me. It was an inspiration to witness these kids emerging from their hard lives for a while into a beautiful creative world.

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