Interview with Herworld by Aneesa A

Been spending time/working/volunteering for Rumah Nur Salam with the kids is great and a fruitful event. All thanks to Dina Zaman for getting me into this NGO organization. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long while. And I've meeting great interesting people in KL, they are all so passionate about what they do for the kids and a street angel indeed.  They may not dress as colorful/flamboyant as the people of the industry that I am in. But, their life are full of colors which something money can't buy or have, only they can experience it. To me, that is incredible....I still have so much to learn from them.

Join me If you have time to spare for the kids....

EVERY CHILD MATTERS!

Govt in denial about HIV/AIDS by Ding-Jo Ann

KUALA LUMPUR, 30 Nov 2009: The government must stop being in denial about children infected with HIV/AIDS, a child rights' activist and advocate said today.

"The government should stop saying that there's no problem, no child prostitution, no children taking drugs, no children with HIV. There are children having sex and taking drugs, that's the reality," Dr Hartini Zainudin, general manager of Nur Salam, a safe house for street children in Chow Kit, said.

"The government should stop putting money just in campaigns, and provide funds so that we can build safe houses and have rehabilitation programmes for children. They should ask the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) what is needed. Better still, they should ask the children what is needed," she added.

Hartini noted that there was a lack of services and programmes available for children with HIV/AIDS.

"We have a centre now for teenagers [in addition to a centre for children under 12]. Some who come to the centre are on drugs or have HIV/AIDS. If you put them in drug rehabilitation, what happens after that? You can't put them back on the streets. Where do they go?" said Hartini.

Hartini was speaking to the press at a media sensitisation workshop organised by the Malaysian AIDS Council (MAC), which included a walkabout in the Chow Kit area, in conjunction with World AIDS Day.

The workshop was held to educate the media on the role they could play in shaping the public's perceptions and attitudes to people living with HIV/AIDS.

Kevin Baker, who works with PT Foundation, a MAC partner organisation, said that in a recent government raid in the area, 34 out of the 300 people arrested were under 18.

"It is difficult to have programmes for these children as it is often difficult for us to obtain parental consent," said Baker. "There is a very big population of children at risk of HIV/AIDS without there being any programmes in place to deal with it."

Hartini said it wasn't just HIV/AIDS that she was worried about but other diseases as well. "I have a baby [at the shelter] with gonorrhea," she said.

Hartini said that marginalised groups were not provided with sufficient education and facilities to protect themselves and their children and that a lot more had to be done.

She said the problem wasn't just an issue for NGOs or the Welfare Department or the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry to tackle alone.

"It's all the other ministries — the Home Ministry, the Health Ministry. The welfare department and women's ministry need to get their mandate from these other big ministries to implement programmes."

Role of the media

Writer and journalist Dina Zaman said the media needed to understand the issue from a macro and micro perspective.

"For example, on a macro level, the incidence of HIV/AIDS might be decreasing. However, on a micro level, in Malaysia, the number of HIV-positive housewives has doubled in the last few years."

Martin Choo from the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS said that the media played a big role in shaping the meaning that the public gives to HIV/AIDS.

"People living with HIV/AIDS should not be described as victims or sufferers," he said, citing these terms as inappropriate and misleading.

"We don't call someone with cancer a cancer victim unless they are dead or have succumbed to the disease. So why should we treat people living with HIV/AIDS any differently?" Choo asked.

Choo explained that as HIV/AIDS was a treatable condition, many people who live with it were well and healthy.

A two-year study of the major English and Malay language newspapers by Choo and MAC president Professor Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman revealed that 11.7% of articles on HIV/AIDS had used inappropriate terminology.

The study also found that this was more prevalent in the Malay-language newspapers as compared to the English-language ones.

"Inappropriate reporting victimises those in need of support," said Choo. "It creates stigma among society and it could prevent those with HIV/AIDS from actually seeking help."

By Ding Jo-Ann
dingjoann@thenutgraph.com

Thank you! Thank you!

The fundraiser event was a success for Rumah Nur Salam. We had raised more than what we expected. For those who had made it to event, a big 'Thank you!' and thanks for your contribution.
And for those who had supported the event (sponsor/volunteer etc), I am very grateful and happy being part/working with you all. You know who you are. Thank you very much!

Finally, soon the kids will have a school and a safe place to go. Yippeeee....

Kak Tini and Kak Dinz, you gals ROCK!

A note by Dr. Hartini, the founder of Rumah Nur Salam.

ONE MORE TIME

I have to give a 2 minute speech tonight at the fundraiser..you know the one @ Carlos, Pavillion? The one I hope most of you are coming too?
Funny, coincidental things happen when you've beein involved in NurSalam- things ( I call them little miracles or 'nods from God' ) just fall into place and things that were seemingly difficult or hard to do just work out in time,faith and with patience. The fundraiser tonight is , I believe, another little 'nod from God 'that we're doing something right-so many friends, family, strangers, friends of friends have pitched in,once again to make sure that we raise funds for our educational centre and ensure that all children have the opportunity to go to school..even if it is a primary school education for now!
The UN Convention non the Rights of the Child says in Articles 28 and 29th of every child's right to free and equal primary school education. Yet here and many countries abroad, many are denied this inherent right because they have no proper or complete documents or in our case, no Malaysian documents.
So many inherent rights that many of us take for granted...the right to an identity, the right to be a child, the right to a nationality, to access to health and free education..yet many, many will never have these rights given.
I digress again..sorry..but true story to drive my point home...
Yesterday a family dropped by our centre about lunch time. The father had been involved in a motorcycle accident, felll and cracked his head. Painful, painful, ordeal but he's fine even if he did have only 3 days of medical leave. He was afraid of losing his job but he was even more afriad not to come to our centre because he wanted to amke sure that his almost 6 year old stateless son could enrol in our school.

You know, the school we haven't built?

I told him that we hadn't built it yet and in the meantime, there were 12 other stateless children from our centre who had just enrolled in a refugee centre to have some kind of educational services- Tuesday to friday, 12- 4pm. The commute was long -almost an hour there and another hour ( or more, depending on traffic) back.

The commute was too far for the parents to send and pick up their son everyday, so could he please stay with us on the days when there were school. I am struck by the fact that the child is so young- too young to be separated from the family for 4 days every week, but the child and parents are insistent. He wants to go to school, he tells me. He's big and he is fine staying with us.

Almost 3 years ago, my friends, family, strangers and supporters believed that I had to help the children in Chow Kit and helped me raise the deposit to build our centre that is NurSalam today. Again, now,old friends, new friends, supporters, family, strangers and supporters, rally once again to make sure that we build this school ( and other schools) so that all children, not just the children in Chow Kit, or NurSalam, but all children have access to education. They said then, we couldn't pull it off but we did, and again now, some naysayers say we won't pull this of, but I believe we will.

How can we not, with this much outpouring of love and support and faith?

Thank you all so much for you consistent love and support. To the team ( you know who you are..too many to name), on behalf of all the children and staff, we thank you for your tireless and thankless effort and the wonderful event that will happen tonight.
Am so scared I'll botch up my speech tonight and start bawling, so I thank you all now!
I know I am forgetting names...but please know you have my gratitude and love and many thaks!

See you tonight...
Love and blessings,
Tini

School For Life, Chieng Mai. By Dr Hartini Zainudin

As many of you know, there is a team of us here,working hard, raising funds, talking to possible partners and experts, lobbying, writing proposals and Memorendums, so we can open centres of education for the marginalised children who are not able to go to regular schools. It is heart-wrenching to have these children denied access to formal education and we know that many social issues would be minimized if we could persuade the government to let the children have their own schools. Amazing friends and strangers are lending their support in countless ways even as naysayers and those who may not see the issues the way we do, protest and tell us to do other things with our time and funds.

So while my friends and partners are busy raising funds and preparing for our fundraising party at Carlos, the Pavillion on the 11th of July, my staff and I have been running around Sabah,Bali and Chiengmai, talking to possible partners and looking at school models that we could use for the same kinds of children we have here- they are everywhere and is a global tragedy.

So many, many children!

45 minutes outside of Chiengmai,Thailand, in the middle of the King's Forest Reserve , 156 children, 26 staff and a no of workers toil the land, live in family type-housing and go to school. The waiting list is 700 children long-incredible and just an indication of how badly schools like this are in need. How children are chosen is based on the dire situation of each child, background checks and only the most violated and most vulnerable are chosen- even then...

The School for Life, Chian Mai , is a private social welfare school under the Foundation for Thailand Rural Reconstruction Movement Under Royal Patronage- which means that all the street children, underpriveleged children, refugees, orphans, children from the tribal villages are under the protection of the royal family of Thailand- the Crown Princess, no less!

Our children, here in Malaysia, would need similar type of protection when we open similar schools here in KL.I worry whom we can get similar protection from but these schools must happen here, nevertheless .

What I love about The School for Life:

The goal of the school is to educate children to develop their entreperneurial spirit.An innovative entrepreneur is a person without particular resources who plays with an entrepreneurial idea and carries it out on the marketplace.The school wants to creat a setting that encourages children and youth to develop and attempt entrepreneurial ideas in a playful setting and without the pressure of starting a business. The children are thus prepared for situations later in life in which it will be important to create employment positions for themselves and for others in order to break through the cylce of poverty and discrimination.Even children who are denied a right to identity and citizenship the way many of our children are, would benefit from schools like this and could have an alternative, global education, with relevant life skills, and thrive not just survive!

The children bake their own bread on Thursday and Sundays ( thanks to an ex banker from Switzerland, who teaches the children how to fire their own hand built oven ( that's also a pizza oven) and sell 50 loafs of bread ( no more, no less) at the same time, same place.They sing and have worked with a German tv station on their own animated (3 minute) movie that is sold in Germany, calenders, documentaries have been made, the enter drums, song and dance competitions, drawing and soccer competitions and win!

They have their own bank, health hut, sundry shop, 3 water buffalos that was donated by a funder to bring blessings to their schools, numerous dogs, cats and fistfuls of determination, happiness and a fierce love for one another- children, staff and workers. There are Guardian angels- older children who mentor younger children, who ensure that the little ones are looked after and there are staff who teach, family staff, whose job are like foster parents and who take care of the children outside of school
( each family has foster staff and maybe 20-30 children, living together, and farm small individual plots of land and the 2 nights we were there, we were invited to eat in different family homes, as well as staff who work on the maintenance of buildings and the surrounding land. But the children work on everything!

The 2 days we were there, we ate what the children found, fished and collected from the forest and their organic vegetable plots and farm, ate with them, talked to them- they cleaned our rooms, worried about water problems, welcomed us into their school and held hands with us as we walked around the compound - us, perfect strangers, so that we would feel welcome! So like our NurSalam children, I ached and just wanted to hug and protect all of them too! We watched as they greeted each other every morning as part of their school ritual, performed their meditational dance so they would start their day, in peace and in harmony with their surroundings and literally ran to their classes, seemingly happy and excited.I had sworn that I would find a polite way to decline their invitation to rummage through the forest looking for edible mushrooms to cook, and while fish is one of my favourites, I really did not want to run through rivers and mud, hunting for my meal. All I could think about were leeches and scorpions that I felt were lurking everywhere- thank God, we ran out of days (auuwww, maybe next time- not) and would rather visit classrooms instead..and sleep and eat!

Jurgen, the founder of the school and who also was one of the advisors in the Green School in Bali
( another potential partner) worries about an international based NGO who wants to buy up the land surrounding the school and their land, to build a place to get children adopted- their website says the aim is to get a million children adopted..we smell child trafficking and will snoop around. What I've found out isn't good but this means ammunition to shut these horrible people down.

Which brings me to another thing...for you in Malaysia..buy the EDGE today- Sue Quek wrote an article on anti child trafficking that comes out today and it's a terrific piece.....