Together with our local partner who has been working on Bali since more than a decade, we bring books to the remote Northern part of Bali. Bali is known for being a touristic islands but less known for its challenging education system. Buildings, teacher, school material and books are missing. My partner Gusti has told me that she learned from “the same” (as being physically “the same”) books more than 20 years ago when we visited the elementary school she went to when she was a little girl. The books were yellow and moldy. Each of the schools captures between 30-80 students, depending on how accessible the school building is. The parents of the kids (they were, of course, all very sweet) are mostly farmers. We have already started building up libraries for two schools and we intend to do more: chairs, desks, pens and books …. all is still needed.
Personally, I was overwhelmed by the joy the kids had when we distributed the books. They started opening the books and reading the content from the beginning to the end without being asked to. Of course, the books are very well written and designed by artists and activists from Bali. The book content cover environmental issues as well as animal protection – all well animated. A pure pleasure. Even for me 🙂
