INDONESIA

Photo by Josh Estey -  UNICEF/HQ05-0324 - 31.01.05 BANDA ACEH13 IMG_0666.jpg

Two girls sitting arm-in-arm share an activity book during a play session in a camp for people displaced by the tsunami, in the TVRI television station compound in Banda Aceh, capital of Aceh Province. UNICEF is working with local NGOs to help the children recover from trauma they experienced during the disaster. The children attend public school in the mornings and gather every afternoon to play, sing, draw and dance at the camp’s UNICEF-supported Children’s Centre. Vivi Soviani, a UNICEF programme coordinator and teacher for some 150 children in the camp, says: "It helps the children forget about the tsunami. Many of them have lost everything." 

[#5 IN SEQUENCE OF FIVE]
In late January and February 2005 in Indonesia, relief efforts continue following the 26 December 2004 earthquake off the country’s western coast and the subsequent tsunamis that devastated coastal areas in more than eight countries. The disaster killed an estimated 102,897 Indonesians in the northern province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (commonly called Aceh) on Sumatra Island, and left more than 500,000 homeless. The death toll in all countries is more than 200,000 – one third of them children. In Aceh Province, UNICEF is supplying emergency health kits and is working with the Ministry of Health’s nutrition, immunization, and water and sanitation programmes. UNICEF is also supporting emergency education initiatives – including the provision of school-in-a-box and recreation kits – as well as child protection interventions to avert child trafficking, to provide special health- or trauma-counselling services and to help reunite separated children with their families.