•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

The power of social networking Web site Twitter is being harnessed by an online Indonesian parenting community to improve the nutrition of children living on Jakarta’s streets.

Mommies Daily, a Web site and interactive community for parents, launched a Twitter campaign called “Moove It” on Wednesday to provide milk for street children, editor Hanifa Ambadar said.

“Giving milk is better than giving money,” Hanifa said, adding that cash handouts to children were more likely go to their street bosses or be used to buy cigarettes, soda or alcohol.

Managing Editor Affi Assegaf said that the donation drive began after the Mommies Daily staff were talking about how helpless they felt when approached by street children begging or selling goods at intersections and under highway bridges in Jakarta.

“We have been talking for a long time about how every time we go out and see children on the street begging we don’t know what to do. We don’t want to give them money because we don’t want to give them the incentive to be on the street,” Affi said.

Through the community’s Twitter account, mommiesdaily, the group originally said that if they got 3,000 followers by Thursday noon, they would donate 1,000 boxes of milk. However, just 24 hours after the campaign launch, Affi said that the group’s Twitter account had 1,000 followers, but donations to the milk drive meant that they now have enough to distribute 5,400 boxes.

“A lot of people have been retweeting the message and have been spreading the message,” Affi said.

“We also received donations in cash from people who live outside Jakarta,” Hanifa added.

Mommies Daily is a sister site developed by the same team that put together the popular blog Fashionese Daily.

“From our work on Fashionese Daily we know just how powerful Twitter is to get people to talk,” Affi said.

“Getting more followers was never our goal, we wanted to get people talking about street children,” she said.

The Mommies Daily team began distributing the first 600 boxes of milk to street children in South Jakarta on Thursday.

“There’s no real system, wherever we see children in need we will stop and give them the milk,” Affi said.

The milk donation drive is just the beginning for the online community.

“We definitely aren’t going to stop here,” Affi said.

“If we keep getting more support maybe we can do something even bigger next time. People are sending us ideas,” she said.

For more information visit www.mommiesdaily.com or www.twitter.com/mommiesdaily.