We have had the pleasure to introduce the Bali Water Protection (BWP) program to 15 school students from the famous Green School, a stunning school whom wall-less classrooms are made of bamboo, and where sustainability is at the core of the teaching. We welcomed them in our new training centre, also made of bamboo architecture.
They came with their “Bio Bus”, one of their three school buses running on biofuel extracted from used cooking oils. During their “challenge week”, they were really excited to visit IDEP’s office and learn about the water scarcity that Bali is facing, and about our solution to that issue: Bali Water Protection program (BWP).
The students are well aware about the environmental issues of the world and of Bali itself. They sure have the knowledge about water pollution and how dry some areas of the island are. However, only one student knew about the intrusion of salt water into the aquifer system, and the lack of visibility of this issue could be a major factor of explanation, this particular problem being underground. Out of sight, out of mind!.
Over one and half hours, we explained what the Bali Water Protection program is about and how our gravity-fed recharge wells is the simplest and most efficient way to restore the dramatically damaged watershed system.
During this visit, we also gave them a tour of our new permaculture garden and the importance of preserving the quality of the seeds to sustain ourselves with nutritious chemical-free food.
The future educational curriculum that IDEP will develop for the BWP program (once the initial funding of USD 100 000 will have been reached), will focus on educating the youth living in Bali about the importance of preserving the quality of the water. This action will be focused alongside the rivers, where trash and chemicals have led the quality rating of most of the rivers to be decreased. Thus, we were excited to learn about the chemical free soaps, developed by a group project at Green School!.
Education is one of IDEP’s main missions. Thus, it is always rewarding for us to be participating in the education of the youth. On top of that, the Green School students are definitely future leaders of change making! We were very pleased to have such full attention, and we are now discussing how this visit could lead to further collaboration to preserve this essential element of life, water.
We are still in the process of fundraising the initial funding that will allow us to finance critical research as well as both the educational and media programs. Please support us by visiting the online fundraising page, that allowed us to reach over 10% of the overall USD 100 000 needed to take this 1 million dollar program into motion. https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/5zytb.
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