Aziz: Little Advocate for a Clean Environment

When Aziz, 5, finds garbage scattered about his house, he immediately puts it in the garbage box. Even when he sees garbage littered on the road, he will also put it in the garbage box.

After attending training on how to live clean and healthy, he changed his habit and became a "little advocate" for a clean environment.

"Why don't you put the garbage in the proper place, Mam," said Aziz, recently. He "caught" his teacher throwing zalacca fruit seeds on the ground instead of into the garbage box.

In the evening, Aziz will count how many times remembered to put garbage in the garbage box, and then report the number to his mother, Sawitri. His mum will place stickers in a calendar as a reward. He is proud of the line of stickers that grows by the day.

Sawitri helps monitors her son's behavior change; from carelessly throwing garbage to wisely putting garbage in its proper place.

Wahana Visi Indonesia's Urban Healthy Environment for Children Project initiated the program that introduces clean and healthy life style for Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) children as an effort to create clean and healthy life styles in the community.

There are four good behaviors initiated: washing hands with soap, brushing teeth, putting garbage in its proper place, and eating healthy food.

The organization provides messages on health through interesting activities done by ECCD teachers who have received training that was started in January 2014. World Vision works with PETRA University to conduct the training using educational tools according to the selected theme.

Putting garbage in its proper place was the theme chosen by Teratai ECCD which is situated in a neighborhood in Pegirian. This theme was chosen by the teachers, because they see the environment around their houses.

Empty land tends to become a place to dump garbage. The garbage clogs the ditches, and when it rains the  water cannot flow smoothly, causing flooding during the rainy season.

The ECCD teachers hope that they will be able to change their environment with the help of their students.

World Vision facilitated ECCD teachers, students, and parents to meet with representatives of Petra University to create an educational tool to help them educate others. They used a board game to share messages about the impact of throwing garbage everywhere and how to treat garbage properly.