Around 30 children wearing cow costumes walk around the six floors of Senayan City shopping center in south Jakarta, distributing 500 balloons with the writing “We support mothers to breastfeed.”

Every five minutes, leader of the children asks, “Are you cows’ children?” “No!” the children reply. “Are you breastfed children?” asks the leader. “Yes,” the children yell.

The event is part of awareness raising around World Breastfeeding Week, which falls in the first week of August every year. It’s an important issue for World Vision in Indonesia, where a growing number of urban dwellers are missing out on vital health messages that protect both mother and child from malnutrition.

This year, World Vision invited Sophie Navita – a celebrity mum of two children who exclusively breastfeeds them – to host a talk show along with noted breastfeeding expert Dr. Utami Roesli, CEO of Carolus hospital Dr. Markus Waseso Suharyono and director of Indonesian Consumers Protection body Huzna Zahir as speakers.

The event, promoted by the cow-children, attracted a live audience of around 200 visitors as well as media and artists. Questions raised included the impact of breastfeeding on women’s beauty, the quality of breastmilk in a mother who fasts, and breastfeeding management for working mothers.

“It is not because of breastfeeding that mothers’ breasts change a bit,” quipped Sophie, who is married to a well-known Indonesian musician. “It is because of pregnancy. If you don’t want it to happen, don’t get pregnant in the first place!”

Answering a question on food that should be avoid by breastfeeding mothers, Utami explains that breastfeeding mothers do not need to avoid anything except narcotics, alcohol and smoking.

“Since a baby in the mother’s womb, she or he has been adjusted food consumed by his or her mother,” explained Utami.

According to Utami, only around one in a thousand mothers who says that she cannot breastfeed actually has a problem with producing milk.

“The rest of them simply do not have correct information or have not found health workers or helpers who could help solve their problem,” she added.

Utami also raised the importance of ante-natal preparation for breastfeeding, with discussions around the benefits and the process necessary for both mother and father. The aim, to exclusively breastfeed for the first six months, gives a nutritional boost that lasts a lifetime as well as cutting down on diarrhea and gastric infections caused by ingestion of foreign matter on an underdeveloped digestive system.

“Without ante natal preparation, the breastfeeding failure rate will be higher. Breastfeeding is a process of three people: baby, mother, and father. The role of a father is just as important as the role of a mother,” Utami stressed.

According to Huzna Zahir, the government policy of breastfeeding in hospitals is not enough to help mothers overcome some of the common myths and fears around the process.

“We found that health workers do not fully support mothers to breastfeed their baby as early as possible. Every hospital will give formula milk to a baby, sometimes without his or her mother’s notice, saying the mother does not have breastmilk,” Huzna claimed.

As well as the Jakarta event, World Vision also urged communities to support mothers to breastfeed their babies in a talk show in open fields in urban Jakarta, Aceh and Papua, that were attended by thousands of mothers.

National Director Trihadi Saptoadi says that mother’s breast milk is a basic strategy to solve poverty problem. “If we want to solve poverty, we have to start from healthy children not from economic structure,” says Trihadi.