Health and Education Volunteer Work

When I heard I would be living in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city, I knew I wanted to find a health-related NGO to volunteer with so I could learn more about health in the country. After a month of looking for an organization to work with, I met a woman running the World Vision Surabaya office in my site. We arranged a couple of times I could go into the “slum” neighborhoods they worked in (you can’t get to these places by taxi, or even car) to do some kind of community outreach. It was a little hard to decide what exactly I would be doing since I don’t speak Bahasa Indonesia fluently and definitely didn’t know the local language of the community—Madurese. We decided I would come by to facilitate health lessons. These are pictures from those lessons, which included lessons teaching “decision making,” “hygiene,” and “nutrition.” I learned a lot about how an international organization starts work in a community, the strategizing and planning that goes into the work, and how Indonesia is dealing with its health problems in underdeveloped neighborhoods with diverse backgrounds and varying cultures.

I also often worked with the wonderful women running the AMINEF/Education USA office in Surabaya, who helped me find other things to fill my spare time! I was interviewed on a local radio station about life at an American university, presented many writing workshops at universities explaining how to apply to scholarships for study abroad (such as Fulbright) and the application process, and guided students at the annual Education Fair.

My 10th grade students at the Education Fair in Surabaya :)