Bali Projects – Web Page for Bali Transport

I made a web page for our Balinese partner Gusti Made Merta, he runs a transport business and has many repeat customers.  I’ve been wanting to see if a web page could help him.  But, email forwarding is not working at the moment, am trying to resolve that problem, after that we are good to go!

http://balitransport.typepad.com/bali-transport/

Take a look!

Lake Bratan, with Made Merta and Rahtut

Bali Projects – Village English Lessons

Village English Class

We have free English Lessons for the children of our village.

About 20 children are taking advantage of the program, taught by Wayan.

Woodside Portola Valley Rotary has donated a wonderful dictionary to this project.

Bali Projects – Suta Dharma School

Suta Dharma Graduation

Suta Dharma is a wonderful public school supported by the Yayasan (foundation) Tri Hita Karana.  Tri Hita Karana refers to the Balinese belief of balance between God, fellow man and nature.  We have arranged with friends and the Woodside Portola Valley Rotary Club to sponsor 8 students.  The cost for one year of private schooling (school 8 hours a day) including uniforms and meals is $390.00 per student.  Also Suta Dharma keeps aiding the student through Junior and Senior High School even though SD ends at 6th grade.

For pictures of

 the most remarkable Graduation Ceremony for 2008 , see our picasa web site

http://picasaweb.google.com/suebennett88/SutaDharmaGraduation

http://picasaweb.google.com/suebennett88/SutaDharmaGraudation2009#

 …..The students present traditional (and not so traditional) Balinese dance, music and song.

See our blog on the Bali Ubud Rotary Schools Project for the Ubud Public Schools.

Bali Projects – Water Storage for our village

Last year we donated the materials for a water storage tank situated at the Pura Dalem Temple to serve the temple and the people of our village Sembuwuk.  Municipal water is often on only an hour or two a day.  This stores the water so it is available any hour of the day.  We suggested we make it large and they really did!

Bali Projects – Organic Rice – SRI

We are in an experimental year of growing organic rice in Bali. Bali has about 20% organic rice and now that prices for fertilizer and pesticides are climbingWe are in an experimental year of growing organic rice in Bali. Bali has about 20% organic rice and now that prices for fertilizer and pesticides are climbing it is now more cost effective to grow by organic methods. We are underwriting this for one year. The padi was plowed with the “japanese cow” i.el a mechanical rototiller and we had 2 types of rice in the nursery, Mangkok and a Japanese variety (or so we thought). We woke up one day to find a woman planing the old way…yikes. After frantic calls she stopped…and we went back in the afternoon and she was planting the old way once again! The next morning Pak Warsa came to demonstrate the correct way of planting. Our manager had not understood the concept and thinking there was not enough rice bought more to plant the old way. Changing how people do things is going to take some time!

The System of Rice Intensification or SRI also uses much less water, 2 days with water and 5 days without.   We saw no water when it should have been there and it seems as if there was a break in the water or subak system above us.  Twice now we have gotten this fixed.

We are now in our second cycle of 2 days of water 5 days without, next is weeding, apparently crucial to the success of the plants.

Pak Warsa demonstrating the new way to plant rice