Nias, Indonesia'€™s westernmost island, used to be a major venue for international surfing competitions. Global attention to the island heightened after it was hit with a large-scale tsunami in December 2004 and powerful earthquake measuring 8.6 on the Richter scale in 2005.

The devastation attracted international attention for months, with the global community working with the Indonesian government to send a huge amount of humanitarian assistance to the island to help the victims.

The international spotlight on Nias served to expose the real condition of the island'€™s people -- acute poverty and a wide gap in development compared to other areas in Indonesia.

 Poverty alleviation has thus far remained a big problem for the island, which is also home to other issues, ranging from undernourishment, school dropout, poor attention to health and crime.

The local administration, with help from scores of NGOs, has carried out various programs to get rid of the problem.

 '€œIt has to be noted that communities themselves must have a role in improving the situation, in this case families. Changes in line with what is expected are not easy as they need process and time,'€ said Portunatas B. Tamba, manager of the Nias chapter of Wahana Visi Indonesia.

 Portunatas explained that a family was expected to provide room for education and for the formation of character as preparation for life.

As families also had various functions, such as dealing with social issues, culture, economy and education, they could not be separated from nearly all social problems arising in communities, he said.

Nias Island, as one of the regions where Wahana Visi gives guidance services, is striving to catch up with the development of other areas, especially on education, health and economic empowerment, which contribute greatly to the lives of children.

Amid various guidance and counseling services, Wahana Visi is also serious about focusing on health issues on the island, where the level of awareness among parents on the importance of nutrition remains low.

Poor attention by parents, who are mostly poorly educated and who work as rubber farmers, has led to malnutrition and stunting among babies.

Portunatas said that to help settle the problems, his organization had encouraged the deployment of more nurses in villages. A third of up to 30 nurses in Nias regency, for example, now stayed in the villages, ready to assist.

Another focus was on introducing the intensive utilization of lands around their houses for planting vegetables to deal with insufficient nutrition consumption, he said.

He added that the program was carried out by developing collective nutrition garden projects where villagers were trained how to clear land, manage seedlings and tend to plants. The vegetables introduced to villagers for development included cucumber, chili, eggplants and beans.

'€œKnowledge and know-how given during the training in the pilot project are applied at home. Nearly all families in the village now have their own nutrition gardens developed on unused land near their houses,'€ said Rebeka Gulo, head of a garden group in Hiambanua village, North Nias regency.

Aside from expecting the harvests, villagers learn how to work together with their neighbors, starting from opening the lands, preparing land plots, planting seedlings to tending the plants.

Rebeka explained that vegetables had contributed greatly to the economies of the families as the harvests could be consumed by them or sold to the market.

A similar result could be seen in Ombolata Sisarahili village, where nearly 78 families had now developed their own nutrition gardens, and where parents and children worked together to manage their plants.

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