10 Sept’16 – For almost 3 weeks, three of our child counselors: Indri, Tora and Luki attended a training at SOS Children’s Village in Bandung, West Java.

The training is targeted to caregiver or mother-like figure for children in safe house, designed to mimic actual family care. The participants came from all SOS Children’s Village centers in Indonesia. Our counselors were the only ones from outside the Children’s Village and among them are two males. Even though the training is rather female-centric, our male counselors also learn a lot and their attendance added more variety for the training itself!

Why did we send our counselors to this training? It is because we’re looking toward our future where our care system will be designed to be more like a family care. We believe that the best place for children to live and grow is within a family. Since not all children are fortunate to live or even have a caring family, it is our duty to provide a home where children feel like they live in small family with a parent figure.

SOS Children’s Village is a worldwide organization with more than 44 years of experience in family-based care. Their care system has been long established and proven. Therefore, it is an honor for Peduli Anak to learn from them. We’re very thankful for SOS Children’s Village Indonesia for sharing their knowledge with us.

According to Indri, a counselor and shelter manager at Peduli Anak, “It was such an amazing experience to join the training at SOS. Not only do I learn more about family care, but I also learn ways to make myself a better counselor to better serve my children at Peduli Anak. The “village” is maintained well and built like a real house complex. Every house has a “mother” so children feel like they live in real family, not orphanage.”

Both Peduli Anak and SOS Children’s Village Indonesia wish to continue this mutual collaboration.