Bali Island has long been a major tourist destination in Indonesia. Many guests from all over the world visit to enjoy the natural landscape of Bali and feel the hospitality of the people who live there. Bali is also blessed with stunning natural landscapes complemented by a variety of culinary delights that represent the relationship between Javanese and Balinese culture.
In collaboration with IVP (International Volunteer for Peace) Australia, Bhumi Horta Foundation held a workcamp activity started from September 8th to 21st, 2024. This activity is the first workcamp at this location. This activity was attended by four local volunteers, as well as four foreign volunteers from Italy (Marco), Australia (Sharon), Taiwan (Belinda), and Slovenia (Tinkara), and Sany (Indonesia) took a role as a campleader of this group.
This activity was carried out together with SUA Bali as our local partner, located in Banjar Medahan, Kemenuh Village, Sukawati District, Gianyar, Bali. This activity involved the surrounding community with volunteers, both foreign and local, to improve the condition of books in the SUA Bali library and other supporting activities.
Workcamp is an international volunteer program for a period of 2 weeks. This program is run by Bhumi Horta Foundation based in Semarang. Foreign and local volunteers live in one location to do activities with the community for 1 to 2 weeks with a certain theme. The activity in this location is themed education.
The main task of volunteers at this location is to clean the library and the collection of books. After that, they classified based on the categories, such as Philosophy, Law, Citizenship Studies, Culture, and so on. Those that have been identified and cleaned, were all listed in a digital file. It allows us to see the condition of the book collection in the library in general.
To support the sustainability of the Library, we hold activities such as school visits and workshops for children. This activity aims to introduce the library that can be utilized by the surrounding community located in SUA Bali. We conducted storytelling and drawing workshops. Volunteer visits to schools were carried out at SDN Kemenuh 05, and SD Olas Asih. Meanwhile, the drawing and storytelling workshops carried out at SUA Bali invited students and teachers from the school.
This program is called the Vern Cork Library Project, because Vern is a senior volunteer from Australia who actively participated in procuring books that now also decorate this library with Ibu Dayu and her family. Vern Cork passed away in early August this year, leaving this library to be utilized by the community.
To increase the participation of young Balinese in this program in the future, we held a visit to Ngurah Rai University in Denpasar. Students and academic staff collaborated in various programs ranging from internships to volunteers.
With all of these activities we had in our workcamp, we hope that we could have some improvement towards the local communities, especially in literacy among residents, children, and youth.
