Female artist, NGO help fight against human trafficking
Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Gunungkidul, Yogyakarta
The fourth grade students looked very happy as renowned TV presenter Dewi Hughes "taught" in front of their class.
"So, what do you think is the moral of the story, dear students?" she asked tenderly while waving a piece of purple paper with a comic strip on it.
Shyly, one by one, the students answered as the celebrity walked around the class, moving from one table to another, asking them other questions about the comic story they had just learned together.
"Now that you have studied the story that says that children have to stay at school to finish their study, what would you say if someone asks you to go to Jakarta now to work?" Hughes asked again.
This time, the students of the remote SDN Girisekar elementary school in Panggang sub-district, Gunungkidul regency, cried out "No!" And when Hughes asked why, in unison they yelled out that they were not yet old enough to go to work.
Popular TV celebrity Dewi Hughes was performing her duty as the national ambassador for the eradication of trafficking in women and children.
"Human trafficking, especially that of women and children, is a transnational, well-organized crime. Unless each of us is actively involved in fighting against it, it will be very difficult to conquer," Hughes said on the sidelines of the campaign recently held in Gunungkidul regency. The regency was picked to kick off the campaign as many people here sought work outside of the regency, notably Jakarta.
Hughes, who was appointed an anti-trafficking campaign ambassador by the Indonesian State Ministry of Woman's Empowerment in June 2003, was indeed not alone in the campaign activity last week.
With her were representatives from the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), a Washington DC-based non-governmental organization, International Relief and Development (IRD) that is also based in Washington DC, and snack producer PT Tiga Pilar Sejahtera of Sukoharjo, Central Java.
The activity, which was held at SDN Girisekar and SDN Panggang II, included distributing supplementary food and comic strips carrying moral messages about the importance of finishing school and working only when they were old enough and skilled enough to do so. Three different comic stories were distributed.
ACILS plans to distribute the comic strips to over 30,000 elementary school students in Gunungkidul (Yogyakarta) and Wonogiri (Central Java), places that have long been known as major migrant workers source areas and where the elementary school dropout level is also high.
There have been reports that many elementary school dropouts are forced to work locally, or are sent to big cities to work to help support their families.
What is of concern is that traffickers often deceive these migrant workers; that instead of getting the jobs they are promised, they are forced to work in slave-like conditions or even entrapped into prostitution.
Besides distributing comic strips to elementary school students, ACILS also distributes some 3.8 million printed messages about the danger of trafficking.
The messages, which are inserted inside packets of noodles sold in traditional markets throughout Java, are mainly targeted at adults.
The messages give advice on how to securely migrate for work, include prohibiting children under 18 years of age to migrate for work, not allowing false information to be put into their passports, and studying work contracts carefully before signing.
"We have been working with the issue here in Indonesia since 2001. We cooperate with both government institutions and the NGOs," ACILS' Program Specialist Jamie Davis told reporters on the sidelines of the campaign in Gunungkidul.