down to the street

We had met a group of street children at the traffic light junction of Siranda Hotel. Suheng already known half of them but the rest are new faces. At least we've made a good initial step to get close to them. At that evening, they were sitting together and teasing each other. Two of them were singing with their poor instrument made from 'cepuk' (zinc cork) and small guitar when all the cars at that traffic light stopped to get 'easy money'. That is a normal activity if bunch of street children meet each other. We, even though far older than them tried to adapt and get into their world. World of honesty, world without any mask (without pretending), world of freedom of talking, world of playing, and last, world of poverty. It was not easy since in daily life we meet people who are very different. They are not them. That's all.
Slowly, slowly, they accepted our presence. Suheng offered his cigarettes, although it is not good for them, and one of the girls ask my fire to burn her garbage. They put respect to us and we put respect to them.
Next step? We will report it later...

-written by wisnu-

what are we actually doing?

So, this is our big question (and still). We believe, the answer will change from time to time. When we looked up, we were frustrated. We said to each other, "Buddy, surely we cannot change it. They are so greedy". Then we looked down. Suddenly we realized, "this is the reality". We see poverty, hunger, unfairness and all the chained effects of human's greed. Of course, we cannot directly take them up from those dark valeys and put them into the light one.

And this is our initial step:

We will go to street children's spots in Semarang next week in the afternoon (4 to 5 pm). First we wanna get close to them. Actually one of us (Suheng) had worked in Street Children's NGO for 10 years. He knows where the spots, what time they have free time, what are they actually need and how to get close to them. But since we are 'new' in our activity and not walk under any flags, we need to do this initial step. This step is fundamental to get the up to date conditions, their real needs and resulting a conclusion about what we have to do for the following steps. Since we are lack of people and funding, we don't want to waste everything, just because we don't make the initial step mentioned above.

introduction

We're just young people at Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia. We try to do something for street children at Semarang. We are not a Non Governmental Organization (NGO), nor Governmental Institutions. We have a concept of 'Human for Human'. As a part of our society, we have responsibility to do something. We see something wrong, we are angry, our heads are almost bursting. We aware that we cannot do something extremely huge. That's why, with this our little step, hopefully it gives at least useful contribution for humanity.