West Jakarta: 100 urban poor home mentoring visits

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Thank you for journeying with us, Bina Berdaya Bangsa, as we continue to develop our home mentoring program aimed at coming alongside and empowering parents and children towards healthier futures. We conducted our first cycle in 2024. Initially 13 parents, who were alumni of the parenting course that we conducted at local preschools, opted to participate in the home mentoring program - 8 of whom eventually completed the whole 4-visit series. While the parenting course largely focused on changing awareness and attitudes, the home visiting program focused on families trying new strategies tailored to their specific child and home environment, and for those new habits to be sustained in the long run. Participants primarily focused making changes in on one of three areas per their choice:

• Improving sleep habits for their child
• Improving nutritional habits for their child namely increasing consumption of vegetables and reducing consumption of packaged/instant food
• Reducing digital screen time by providing their child with alternate activities

In the first quarter of 2025 the Bina Berdaya Bangsa team, together with the 2024 participants, evaluated what worked well in the 2024 cycle and what could be improved for the 2025 cycle of home visits. It was clear that vegetable consumption and digital screen time for kids remain salient topics according to the participants. Hence, these two topics will continue to be offered. The 2025 cycle is planned to still be a series of 4 visits per family (similar to the 2024 cycle) but conducted over a 4 month period (Sept-Dec) instead of a year. Also, a new opportunity will be presented to past participants to become volunteers who accompany us in visiting other families. We see this as a way to further empower participants as they share their experiences and support their peers on the same journey.

In the second and third quarter of 2025, our team worked on:

• Improving some of the material based on the feedback we received.
• Personally inviting past participants to participate again and/or become part of the cadre of trained volunteers.
• Recruiting new participants among the parents at the same three local kindergartens in Krendang.
• Starting in July, visiting new families in their homes to explain the program and obtain baseline information about current habits.

Visiting homes of families with children with disabilities is also included in the scope of this project and will be the focus of the next report. Will you join us in supporting these families who are bringing about sustainable changes in their home environment and community?