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We'd love to hear from you, so please register and leave your comments. Readers, please keep in mind that comments do not necessarily reflect official positions of UNICEF or UNICEF UK. While we welcome different points of view, we will review each comment prior to posting it and will not post comments that are off-topic or inappropriate for this public forum.

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What's life like for children in the slums of Jakarta?

Andy Brown, Fri, Feb 15 2013 6:14 AM

Neng is fourteen years old. She lives and works on Venus Alley, a lane in the notorious Jembatan Besi slum in Jakarta, Indonesia. Unlike other children her age, she rarely gets to see the sun. The slum is one of the most densely populated in Indonesia, rising to four stories in places. As they ascend, the homes become increasingly makeshift, with walls and floors made from wood and scrap metal.

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A stitch in time: Burma's street children learn a trade

Andy Brown, Mon, Dec 17 2012 9:34 AM

Sixteen-year-old Thanda has spent much of her life living and working on the streets of Yangon, capital of Myanmar. She is a a Burmese of ethnic Indian descent: a small, serious teenager in a blue polo shirt and traditional longyi skirt.

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Coping with tragedy: the legacy of war in Laos

Andy Brown, Fri, Nov 30 2012 4:50 AM

Peter Kim is a victim of the Vietnam War. But he’s not a Vietnamese or American veteran; he’s a 20-year-old Lao youth living in Vientiane. Four years ago he lost both his hands and eyesight to one of the millions of unexploded bombs that still litter the Laos countryside almost four decades after the war ended.

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Special delivery: Timorese women give birth safely

Andy Brown, Tue, Oct 23 2012 8:27 AM

Isabelle de Santos, 29, lives in Suku (village) Hatólia in Ermera district, Timor-Leste. Her husband is a coffee farmer. She already has four children aged six to 12-years old, and is four months pregnant with her fifth. “I’m hoping it will be a boy so he can help his father in the fields,” she says, laughing.

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Water of life: villages in Timor-Leste get sanitation

Andy Brown, Tue, Oct 23 2012 8:01 AM

Francisca Martinez lives in Suku (village) Estado, high in the mountains of Ermera district in Timor-Leste. She doesn’t know her age exactly but guesses around 30. She has two teenage children of her own and helps look after her sister’s young children. “All the families round here are coffee farmers,” she says. “We earn up to $500 a year selling sacks of beans to an American company. We also keep pigs and chickens and grow corn to eat.”

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Gordon Brown visits UNICEF-supported school in Timor-Leste

Andy Brown, Thu, Aug 23 2012 9:41 AM

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown, and Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova visited Cassait School in Liquisá district, Timor-Leste. It was part of the Secretary-General’s preparations for the UN’s new ‘Education First’ initiative, which will be launched on 26 September, and Mr Brown’s first overseas trip in his new role.

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Road to recovery: children in Iligan go back to school

Andy Brown, Thu, Feb 23 2012 12:31 AM

Ten-year-old Crizelle Joy lives with her grandfather, sister, two aunts and uncles, and nephew in a small one-room hut at an evacuation centre in Iligan, the Philippines. The village is right next to the river and was one of the worst affected by the flash floods that followed Tropical Storm Washi in December.

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Relocation, relocation: helping families living in tent cities

Andy Brown, Tue, Feb 21 2012 3:18 AM

I was in the Philippines recently to see how UNICEF was helping children in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Sendong, which hit the southern island of Mindanao last December. This was the worst storm in the area in modern history, dropping the equivalent of a month's rainfall in just one day.

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Peer to peer: young people help children recover from disaster

Andy Brown, Tue, Feb 14 2012 5:30 AM

Seventeen year old Kim sits with a group of young children in a child-friendly space at an evacuation centre in Cagayan de Oro, the Philippines, one of the towns worst hit by Tropical Storm Sendong last December. The centre is in a barangay (village) covered court. It’s crowded and humid, with the smell of sweat.

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Delivering mosquito nets in flood-hit Bangkok

Andy Brown, Wed, Nov 16 2011 6:55 AM

Seven-year-old Ratnasunder lives with her grandparents and pet dogs in a former classroom at an evacuation centre at Bang Kruai Nok Temple, in Bangkok. For a child who had to flee her home in the face of rising floodwaters, Ratnasunder seems happy and carefree. She smiles broadly and lifts up one of the dogs, squeezing it tightly.

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Escaping the Thai floods at a Buddhist temple

Andy Brown, Tue, Nov 15 2011 9:55 AM

Twelve-year-old Tang sits with his sister Ice, 13, in a ‘child-friendly space’ at Laksi Temple evacuation centre, in Bangkok. They are surrounded by a mixture of squalor and beauty. Dozens of families sleep on mats on the floor of the temple, while golden Buddha statues look down from their pedestals, smiling enigmatically.

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A Bangkok university rises to flood challenge

Andy Brown, Tue, Nov 8 2011 5:17 AM

Tired mother Gaew is one of the thousands of people made homeless by Thailand’s devastating floods. She waits with her chubby five-month-old baby, Peem, outside a makeshift health clinic at Bangkok’s Phranakhon Rajabhat Universit.

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Exile on main street: Chiang Mai street children

Andy Brown, Fri, Oct 21 2011 9:39 AM

Last week, we took a group of popular Thai bloggers to see projects for marginalised children in Thailand’s Chiang Mai district. After two days visiting orchard schools in Fang, we returned to Chiang Mai itself to visit a drop in centre for street children. The drop in centre was a small building in a side street, with an open-plan play area on the ground floor and an office upstairs.

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Fruits of labour: schools for migrant children

Andy Brown, Mon, Oct 17 2011 9:55 AM

I was in Thailand's Chiang Mai district last week, introducing a group of Thai bloggers to UNICEF-supported projects for marginalised children. After our visit to the orchard night school, we went to see a day school in the same area. We got up early and set off in our vans for an orange orchard outside Fang town.

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Evening class: visiting Thai orchard schools

Andy Brown, Wed, Oct 12 2011 10:04 AM

Thailand is rightly famous for the quality of its fruit, but this comes at a price. As we discovered during a trip to Chiang Mai province, many of Thailand’s fruit orchards are staffed by low-paid migrant workers, whose children rarely get to go to school. The trip was part of a project to reach a wider audience in Thailand by taking 12 well-known Thai bloggers to visit UNICEF-supported projects.

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