Ariel’s Story
Digital Literacy Training Boosts the Confidence of Students with Disabilities

Vocational school student Ariel Fitriani has never let her blindness get in the way of achieving her dream of becoming a professional singer. But the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic restricted the 17-year-old’s movements in a way her blindness had never done. “For more than a year, I was stuck at home taking classes online,” Ariel said, adding that not being able to sing at public events, perform in the Javanese orchestra, or be active in her community was beginning to take a toll on her self-esteem and confidence. Her confidence received a boost in March 2021, when Ariel and her friends from the Semarang City Disabled Friends Community were asked to participate in a UNICEF-supported Life Skills Training session as part of the Safe and Friendly Environment for Children programme. Operating in 10 districts and cities in Central Java Province, the programme equips children and adolescents to become peer educators by teaching life skills like digital literacy and reproductive health, while also facilitating access to child protection services for those in need. “What made these sessions so exciting was that they were designed specifically for adolescents and young people with disabilities. In all the years I have interacted with my peers, especially those with intellectual disabilities, we have never been offered reproductive health education,” Ariel said. “The digital literacy and safety information kits are also important because my friends [with disabilities] don’t have a clue on how to safely use social media and don’t fully understand the risks when they interact with strangers online.”

Nissa’s Story
How Family Farming Contributes to Greater Food Security

Farmer and teacher Nissa Wargadipuras’s earliest memories involve learning how to live with nature. Her childhood home’s backyard in the hilly town of Garut, West Java was a little forest where her father planted vegetables, herbs, and fruits and her mother produced traditional medicine from the plants. “Whenever I came home from school, my mother always asked me to do some ‘hunting,’” Nissa says. “I ‘hunted’ guava, coconut, turmeric, cayenne pepper, everything. I could find all that I needed in my parent’s backyard.” Nissa’s childhood memories speak to the deep roots of family farming in rural Indonesia. Yet, as early as her high school years in 1989, Nissa realized her family’s idyllic lifestyle was under threat. For almost two decades she contended with land rights violations, and mobilized farmers through one of Indonesia’s largest farming unions to resist exploitative agribusinesses and labour exploitation. The years of struggle bore fruit: in 2008 Nissa and her husband were able to set up an Islamic Boarding School to teach agroecology, food security, and religion to young people, and preserve traditional family farming practices for another generation. “Students must eat from the farms that they manage,” explains Nissa. “This is one of our main lessons.” Through its Family Farming Initiative, FAO is supporting Nissa and other defenders of smallholder farming to help a new generation of children regain confidence in a heritage that preserves traditional food products, contributes to a balanced diet, uses natural resources sustainably, and safeguards the world’s biodiversity.

Dimas’s Story
How Family Farming Contributes to Greater Food Security

As the first transgender man in Medan, North Sumatra to undergo medical transition, Dimas Cahya is not the sort to be deterred by a lack of precedent. Still, he did not anticipate that becoming the first transgender man to legally change his name in the conservative city of more than 2.4-million people would be such a convoluted process.

Legal recognition in the form of an identity card, particularly one that matches a person’s true identity, is a human right that is not enjoyed by everyone equally. It took ridicule from a legal aid organization, unexpected requests for documents, tips from friends in Jakarta, and an audience with a judge who questioned whether a name change would “erase [his] identity” before Dimas achieved his goal. But his persistence over six weeks paid off. “This is the name I identify with, and I was determined to have it recognized legally,” says Dimas, who requested to be identified with an alias for this story.

Dimas’s name change was supported throughout by the Crisis Response Mechanism Consortium—made up of the UNAIDS in Indonesia and four civil society organizations—whose mission is to mobilize resources for sexual and gender diverse people in crisis situations. Next up, Dimas says, is getting his new name on his national identity card—a target his own precedent suggests he can achieve.

Ali’s Story
Refugees in Indonesia Get Expanded Access to COVID-19 Vaccinations

As an official UNHCR interpreter, former baker Ali Madad Ibrahimi has been a crucial source of support for Afghan refugees in Indonesia since he was forced to flee the Taliban’s persecution eight years ago.

But for most of 2021, Ali was only able to offer remote interpreting services. Government COVID-19 regulations meant that even boarding a bus to a neighbourhood where many Afghan refugees live required showing a vaccine certificate—something Ali did not have as a refugee ineligible for inclusion in the national scheme.

That changed in late September 2021, when thanks to a private scheme jointly organized by several UN agencies, Ali became one of Indonesia’s first refugees to be fully vaccinated. Around the same time, on Sept 21, the Ministry of Health issued a new decree to dramatically increase access to vaccinations for the 13,273 refugees in Indonesia, reflecting broader steps towards greater inclusion for one of the most vulnerable groups in the country. The move followed months of advocacy from the UN in Indonesia.

“I’m very grateful to the UN team for providing vaccines for me and other refugees,” Ali said at an October 7 vaccination event for refugees co-organized by UNHCR, DKI Jakarta Provincial Government, and the Indonesia Chambers of Commerce and Industry. “Now that I have been fully vaccinated, I can get back to my routine, assisting my fellow refugees who need interpreters,” he added.