Indonesia

Reducing barriers and providing equal opportunities can support vulnerable groups to fully participate in the development process. Gender and disability justice must be promoted at both family and community levels.

Women and persons with disabilities, through active membership of community-based groups, have been engaged in livelihoods, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and other development processes, including voicing their rights and their interests to local authorities.

“Before your support, we struggled to feed the family. If we wanted to have food and vegetables we would have to buy from the market, but we didn’t have enough money. We ate just rice.

I felt my heart was crying because all I could feed the family was rice with salt and water.

I was often thinking ‘how can I feed the family? We needed to work for other families like slaves on their rubber trees just to survive.
The first support we got was with chickens and piglets. From selling the eggs and the piglets that we bred, we could buy clothes and vegetables for the children.

I joined the Farmer’s Group set up by CDRM&CDS(your ALWS partner in Indonesia) to learn about growing my own kitchen garden. I learnt how to prepare the land by digging and making the compost. I would collect soil from the land and leaves and other plants to make a mulch. Mix it with rice husks and banana leaves too.

They taught me how to make organic fertilizer by using the water from when I wash the rice each day and to mix it with bamboo root and some other local plants. They also showed me how to make raised seed beds and even how to collect the good seeds from what I grow so I can plant and not have to buy from other places.

I grow chillies, beans, mustard leaves, corn, eggplant, tomatoes and kangkun – my favourite! The children get nutrition from the vegetables. Now I don’t need to go and buy, especially when we have not much money.

I can have money for sending the children to school, especially Omera in the senior school.”

“When Omera was born, the midwife did not bring my baby to me.

They kept her for two days because she was not normal like other babies. Her hands were not normal. But when I saw Omera, I was not sad. I saw her beautiful face, and this changed my heart. I loved her.

When Omera came home from the hospital, many people from the village came to see. They told me many hard things like, “how can you take care of this baby? Look at her hands and feet! What can this baby do when she grows up? You will have trouble in the future.”

Sometimes I would think about those words, and I would cry. But I was not influenced by these words. When I felt sad, I would tell myself that Omera is a gift from God and that each gift He gives can be different.

I thank the people of Australia for helping my family to make the garden, and especially for Omera so she can keep her spirit in education and keep learning and feel confident in herself.”