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Medan, Indonesia – Every night, the staff at the Mutiara Mulia orphanage go
through the same ritual. They set up a tripod with a mobile phone attached and
drag over a speaker to play soothing, ambient music. Then they start
livestreaming on TikTok as the children sleep soundly behind them, soliciting
donations for the orphanage and thanking viewers who send digital gifts that can
be exchanged for cash through the app. “We were inspired to start livestreaming
because we saw other orphanages in Indonesia doing the same thing,” Mika Ndruru,
whose husband Maredi Laia set up the orphanage in 2019, told Al Jazeera. On a
good night, the orphanage’s livestreams can attract up to 2,000 viewers and earn
about $165 through gifts and direct donations to the orphanage’s bank account,
which is prominently displayed on a banner in the background. The livestreams
have been so lucrative the orphanage has been able to pay for four of its 30
students, aged between two and 17 years, to attend private schools. Indonesia is
TikTok’s second-largest market after the United States, with some 106 million
users in 2022. Since launching in the Southeast Asian country in 2017, the
video-sharing app has emerged as a platform for eliciting donations,
particularly for vulnerable groups such as orphans, disabled people and the
elderly. In February, the trend went viral following a series of videos of
elderly women sitting for hours in pools of water and mud while begging viewers
to send donations. A resulting public outcry saw the original creator being
briefly questioned by the police and raised questions about the ethics of online
begging. Yet at Mutiara Mulia in Medan, Ndruru, 26, is adamant that TikTok has
been a lifeline when other sources of funds have dried up. As a private
orphanage, Mutiara Mulia does not receive any government subsidies and relies
entirely on donations from the public. “Some months, we don’t get any donations
aside from those from TikTok,” Ndruru said.
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