Last week, I met with a UW law professor who was spending a month in Jakarta working with a non-profit organization called Uplift. One small connection has turned into something much bigger-- and a potential story idea. The professor, Beth Riven, is vice president of the organization; her husband, Mark Schlansky, is the president and founder. They also happen to live about 5 minutes away from my new house in Lake City. Mark used to work at Boeing too. Strange how you can find such a strong a connection to home in a country you've never been to.
Anyway, I spent some time in their office on Tuesday and was really impressed by the work they've been doing in Indonesia. For close to a decade, the group has been advocating for health and human rights in a few South Asian countries, most recently in Indonesia. It's actually written into the Indonesian constitution that residents are entitled to medical care, but the point is rarely enforced. Uplift's strategy has been to educate doctors on the concept of "right to health" and stresses the importance of disaster training, especially after the 2004 tsunami. They are also targeting a younger generation of doctors, hoping the message will shape a new crop of informed health care professionals and influence the way medicine is practiced here.
Recently Uplift has been working with the mothers of students who attend madrasas, or Muslim schools, to teach them how to make products (mostly bags and storage containers) out of recycled materials, namely the packaging from cleaning products; it's a very Seattle-type project, in my opinion. It's up there with the handbags I've seen made from recycled car leather. All this is part of their project to create "child-friendly communities," where the children, families and neighbors all benefit from better standards of living that are self-realized. Anyway, Uplift is supposed to sell these products on their Web site (I haven't been able to find the link, I'll update when I've got it) and give the profits back to the families. Tomorrow at 6:30 a.m., I'm going with Mark and the Jakarta director of Uplift, named Geni Achnas, to visit a madrasa. I'm very stoked to see a different side of Jakarta.
Today I got to go w/ Augustina, one of our Web reporters, to sample a new Italian restaurant. It was the best Western food I've had in Jakarta, and it most importantly it was free. It was also, at 2:00 p.m., my third meal of the day (a meal of six different courses), testifying to the overeating I've been doing here. Good thing I'm gym-bound today!
A new crop of red, itchy bumps have begun to plague me again, and I'm not entirely sure they are mosquito bites. Why does my skin hate Jakarta?
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