BULLETIN 30 APRIL 2012

“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope”

Attending: Allan, Bill, Bruce, Cat, Danielle, Fred and Mandy, Gabe, Marilyn, Rosalind, Rucina, Rustiasa

Guests: Guest Speaker Rtn Stewart Martin (RC Seaside), USA. Rtn Richard Foss,( RC Colorado Springs Interquest USA), Raelene Starr (hopefully soon a member!), Bill Casey

ANNOUNCEMENTS, CORRESPONDENCE, REPORTS

RC Seminyak is celebrating its tenth anniversary on Saturday May 19th and we’re all invited to a gala dinner party. Tickets are 350,000 rp and e-mail Marilyn moc@easyliving.com to reserve YOURS!!

The best times are sometimes just hangin' out, like Raelene, Fred & Bruce here

Rtn Rustiasa, Director of Campuhan College, hosted Rotaracts from three Bali Rotaract clubs (Ubud, Nusa Dua and Seminyak) plus a number of potential Rotaracts at a full-day training session titled “A New Beginning – Returning to the Essence.” Twenty-two young people, including many of the College’s scholarship students, engaged in leadership and team skills activities and discussed what Rotaract is all about. Rave reviews from attendees and a request for more workshops like this one followed. Well done, Rus.

The Director of ‘Strong Children Strong Nation Foundation’ (Yayasan Sanggar Anak Tagguh) will be our guest speaker on May 28th. The focus of the Foundation is to open the eyes of children from ages 6 to 17 who feel there is no educational future for them.  Help them and get to know how talented these kids are by stopping in at Bar Luna and taking a look at the kids’ photo exhibition starting on May 1. See the world through the eyes of young people hoping for a better future.

Our club was named a Change Maker Club in Indonesia! The award came as a big surprise and we were delighted to be one of the clubs chosen in District 3400. And members can also pat themselves on the back for being generous donors to Every Rotarian Every Year. We ranked 17th among the 90 clubs in District 3400…and we haven’t finished collecting yet!

GUEST SPEAKER

Marilyn with her lovely Rotary Rose pin from Stew Martin

Cat dazzled with Stew's gift necklace

Rtn Stewart Martin, RC Seaside USA and Regional Team Leader for Water and Sanitation Rotary Action Group (Wasrag) was our feted guest speaker this evening. For starters he came bearing gifts! Stew presented Marilyn with a gift of a Rotarian Rose Pin for “being a rose of a Rotarian” for “opening my eyes to the differences and complexities of culture here in Bali and the tremendous hospitality given to my entire team for a month here can never be forgotten.” And to Ibu Cat, a huge thanks AND a lovelyhandmade necklace from an Oregonian artist for overseeing his District’s DSG in Sumba and for giving her time and energy to support water and sanitation projects in Sumba. Stew and District 5100 have been great project partners over the years and we look forward to partnering with them again in the near future.

Stew’s passion is bringing water and sanitation to the needy and Wasrag was the perfect Rotary action group for

Stew Martin presents the Wasrag concept

Stew to work with. Wasrag was formed in 2007 with the aim of reducing the huge number of people lacking access to potable water…a number that stood at two billion! Stew told us that ‘Here in Indonesia it is estimated that 40% of the rural population still has no access to clean drinking water and 60% of the rural population has no sanitation facilities.’

To compound efforts to improve availability of water and sanitation, Stew told us that up to 50% of water, sanitation and hygiene projects fail within the first five years. Most Rotary projects have concentrated on providing THINGS. Often the ‘things’ break and villagers may not know how or have financial resources to fix them. Or, villagers didn’t care one way or the other because they never wanted the ‘things’ that were being provided!

Because evaluation and sustainability are new and important components for project planning and reporting, reasons for less than successful projects will become valuable learning experiences.  Sometimes it’s more important to share what didn’t work than to talk about what did work. We need to verify and be able to measure the success of our projects. Due diligence is a must; community demand has to be strong. Beneficiaries should feel ownership of the project by helping to build it (literally), learning how to maintain it (training to replace parts, for example) and see sustainability as a positive influence in their lives.

Water projects have vastly expanded based on past experiences. It is no longer sufficient to simply deliver water! Water needs to be potable, sanitation facilities should be included, basic hygiene taught and economic improvement considered. Water is just the beginning.

Planning a large District project and including the Wasrag guidelines should be an exciting and productive activity. And using Wasrag’s structure of a Regional Team (now being formed for District 3420) will give a large project the best probability for success.

BULLETIN 23 APRIL 2012

“There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.”
Alexander Woollcott

Attending: Rosalind, Rucina, Patricia, Mandy, Fred, Bruce, Mr. Chu, Cat, Allan, Danielle, Bill

RC Guests: Rich Foss (USA), Lucia (RC Gambier, AU)

Non-Member Guests: Julia (Austria) is seeking water filter projects, Michael Bryants (AU), William Ingram (guest speaker, Threads of Life), Margaret Mockler (USA)

Announcements, C0rrespondence, Reports

Rosalind announced the raffle prize, a combo of a CD by local group No Stress and a rare and collectible spider plant.

Cat announced the good news from Joady Barnes of RC Manningham (AU) that they are donating A$7120 for tanks and toilets in Sumba. Cat will also be accompanying Wasrag Regional Coordinator Stew Martin to Sumba on May 1 to look at the tanks and toilets installed with the help of his club’s Matching Grant, and to discuss more potential projects.

Rosalind reminded guests that they can purchase our fundraising cookbooks. She noted that with Marilyn, Sue W, and LLoyd all in the US, the agenda was a bit light tonight, so she introduced William Ingram, our guest speaker, who used his extra time to excellent advantage with a fascinating education on Indonesian textiles.

Guest Speaker: William Ingram

William works with 2 organizations in Bali: Threads of Life (TOL), a fair trade business, and Yayasan Pecinta Budaya Bebali (YPBB) (Foundation for Sustainable Culture and Livelihood). TOL works with traditional weavers’ coops in Indonesia, currently 50 groups on 20 islands including about 600 women and their extended families. Most of the islands are in Eastern Indonesia but Sumatra, Bali, Kalimantan and Sulawesi are now included.

William came to Indonesia 19 years ago with his partner Jean. They planned to stay only two months from their post in Japan, and had shipped all their things to the United States. They spent the next 15 years bringing it back to Bali. In the early days they led tour groups exploring Balinese culture, and Jean was one of Bali’s first yoga teachers. The tours led them to the eastern islands,where they found the visual traditions rapidly diminishing. What remained were mainly clan houses/architecture, and textiles used as traditional dress, offerings and ceremonial paraphernalia. They started using textiles as a lens through which to explain the communities.

The economic crisis of 1998 caused many poor villages to fall off the economic map. The exchange rate of one US dollar went rapidly from Rp 2,000 to Rp 17,000. Many communities were reliant on commodities, and these prices crashed. Desperate for cash, people put their heirloom textiles up for sale; they had nothing else to sell to raise money. Although they felt it was very important to maintain the culture, they had no options. They needed money to send children to school and buy food and medicine.

Threads of Life (TOL) was initially founded on the assumption that it would create a structure and space in which the traditional textile skill sets could be continued and people could choose to make traditional textiles. Because textiles seldom last more than 50 years in the tropics, they must be constantly remade.

TOL initially started working with individual weavers and sold their textiles in the US. The textiles take one to two years to make as plant dye harvesting is dependant on the seasons. It is a complicated and lengthy process incorporating complex natural dyes (red from bark of tree root, blue from indigo, a leguminous plant, etc.), and hand-tied ikat.

William then displayed a variety of textiles from different islands and explained their differences.

Timor

West Timor. The narrow looms mean that many textiles are joined to make wider cloth. This region had weavers’ coops long before TOL arrived because the Department of Industry was promoting its own agenda by encouraging weavers to use chemical dyes, simplify motifs, increase production and find a mass market. But these remote communities have no access to infrastructure or markets. TOL encouraged these groups to return to traditional dyes and motifs and to work out a fair price. They started with two or three women, and now work with over 20. The group developed to the point that it was lending money to members from the group’s surplus cash. The groups initially form around a master weaver or dyer, usually an older woman who has the technical skills. The younger woman usually manage the administration, which can be problematic. So TOL helped set up a local credit association in which money was only added by purchasing textiles with the women adding a percentage.

Flores

Central Flores. TOL works in several interesting villages. People traditionally bury their dead at home in a tiled grave outside the house, and often guests are invited to sit there. It’s Adat (tradition) first, Agama (religion) second here. It has been proved that weavers make a lot more money making traditional rather than commercial textiles despite the long time required to finish them. A direct comparison was made by the World Bank using a value chain analysis between the production of traditional textiles from natural dyes, and textiles from chemical and synthetic dyes. It was shown that weavers make 370% more per unit of time by using natural dyes.

It’s important that ritual textiles be made from dyes that grow on the land where the people live, reflecting their deep connection to the land. It takes at least a year for each weaving to be finished due in part to the availability of the natural dyes. Red dye from moringo tree roots is harvested in the dry season and indigo is prepared at the end of the wet season. The actual weaving is done in the dry season. All the textiles are made of local or imported cotton. (The history of cotton goes back about 2,000 years in Indonesia, and indigenous cottons originally came from India.)

Sulawesi

Sulawesi. Tanah Toraja motifs reflect the traditional architecture and are used to define ceremonial space rather than being used for clothing. The textiles are made a three-day walk west of the main village on a very dangerous road or by foot. The average age of the weavers is early twenties. It took a long time for TOL staff to win the weavers’ trust because dealers would exploit the community by waiting until the very end of the dry season when the community was desperate for cash and then force the price down. The weavers made lower-quality textiles as a result. It took a while for one weaver to start working with TOL, and when the others saw that she was making money they joined in. Now TOL works with six coops in four villages who send sack loads of beautiful textiles to Bali. TOL supplies the cotton because the traders mix in rayon and other textiles; this does not show with synthetic dyes, but does with natural dyes.

Java

East Java. The batik is made a few hours from Surabaya. The villagers grow the cotton, spin and weave it,grow the dyes, and make the batik — the steps from beginning to end. A young woman and three others recognizedthat the art of batik was deteriorating and set up a class after school for young girls to learn the skills. The textiles were sold to pay for their education. The small original area was covered by a lean-to roof that now extends to cover the area of a basketball court, where a second generation of young women is studying.

Kalimantan

Kalimantan. TOL works with Dyak weavers in West Kalimantan. The main challenge in maintaining their textile traditions is the loss of forest. The ceremony attached to making red dye used to be a women’s 72-hour secluded event. They use a very complex oiling process for the threads. The chemistry is mind boggling, involving saponification using natural aluminium salts and red dye, and many different plant, animal and fish oils. Thus the power of the landscape enters the cloth. Loss of landscape means the meaning of the cloth is compromised. The coop buys from members and when the textile sells, 30% goes to the coop and the balance to the weaver. But the coop can’t survive on 30% — they are sharing the gross profit, not the net profit, so the business model is not working. When TOL first started there they found 300-400 weavers interested in natural dyes. Now TOL works directly with the weavers instead of coops–at this point just 12 women. Hopefully it will be successful and demonstrate to the coops that they need to change their business models.

Bali Nusa Penida. TOL works with one man who is using natural dyes and several weavers to make complex, beautiful ikats.

Textiles are symbolic of traditional value systems. TOL consciously honours and communicates these value systems. All the coops they work with said to TOL staff that they’d been told that they had to choose between maintaining their traditional culture or make a living, that the two were mutually exclusive. How do we respect and express cultures and identities to make fair and sustainable  livings while doing so? TOL’s long-term experiment is to answer that question.

The Raffle was won by guest Lucia.

Attending: Rucina, Cat, Rosalind, Mandy, Fred, Gabe, Bruce, Cheung Chu, Bill, Philip

Regrets: Antje (Germany); LLoyd, Sue, Marilyn, Alisa, Danielle (US); Zsuzsa (Canada); Don and Sue B (somewhere in the Pacific); Driya and Probo, Kadek, Mary Lee, Mary Jane, Patricia, Tjok Raka (Bali); Augie (Bali? Thailand?)

Guests: Andrew and Penny Wells from the UK; Deborah and Douglas MacDonald of Queensland, AU; Ruth Austin from Sydney, AU; Natalia Perry (speaker), Parveen and Wayan, all from Sacred Childhoods Foundation; Nikki Hennigan and Barbara Smith of RC Canggu

PE Rosalind opened the meeting with an apology for the lack of a raffle prize. We suspect there’s a secret stash at LLoyd’s, but since he’s out of the country… Donations of prizes will be most welcome!

Rucina, Rustiasa and Rosalind shared their different experiences at DISTAS (District 3400′s Assembly) in Sanur on Saturday. Each went to a separate, day-long breakout session. Rustiasa attended the one on Rotary’s New Generation focus led by PP Suryawan of RC Denpasar (a former Rotaract), and was amazed at the range of programs Rotary offers, some of which have direct application to plans at his Campuhan College. Rucina joined the Administration section which, as incoming Secretary, she found quite useful. Rosalind was in the English-speaking section led by Guz Goh and got a thorough review of all the roles of club officers and the many aspects of being a club president.

One thing she learned there is that Club Assemblies are recommended to be held four times a year. Some clubs include these in their regular meeting schedules, devoting one meeting to an assembly and closing it to guests. She asked for members’ opinions, which were mixed. Gabe settled it for the immediate future by offering her place for the next assembly. Thanks Gabe!

Bill gave an update on the proposal for an HIV/AIDS testing clinic. He reported that Marilyn had received very positive feedback on it from RC La Jolla Golden Triangle, and it’s moving along.

Gabe’s Rotary Minute was inspiring as usual, reminding us of President Banerjee’s message of humanity’s common hopes, and then noting that his Bangladeshi countryman Mohamed Younis will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming Rotary Convention in Bangkok (May 6-9). Younis won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work founding the Grameen Bank and its hugely successful microfinance program, which makes small loans to people (mostly women) ineligible for traditional bank loans. Younis is a mesmerizing speaker—yet another reason to attend the Convention!

Rucina introduced our guest speaker, Natalia Perry, who founded Sacred Childhoods Foundation to combat the trafficking of children and women. This was Natalia’s second visit to RCBUS, and she got more detailed about the efforts of SCF, including their Project COCAC: Combating Organised Crimes Against Children, just launched in January.

Human trafficking is currently the second most prevalent and profitable crime in the world after drugs, and alongside arms trafficking. COCAC is focused on three major issues in Indonesia: (1) Trafficking of Children (ToC) for purposes of sex; (2) ToC for Illegal Organ Harvesting; and (3) Child Abuse in the Indonesian Community.

ToC is a significant problem in Indonesia where about 100,000 children per year are trafficked, 70,000 of whom are sold into sex slavery. Their families are told lies about what they will be doing, e.g., cultural dancer, and they end up in a brothel with a life expectancy of four years.

Indonesia signed the Rights of the Child Protocol in 2008, but there is a wide discrepancy between the law and its enforcement. The US Department of State publishes the Trafficking in

Persons (TIPS) report ranking countries by the extent of trafficking. Indonesia is currently a Tier 2 country: countries who do not fully comply with the minimum standards, but are making

Natalia Perry of Sacred Childhoods Foundation

significant efforts. Indonesia wants to avoid the Tier 2 Watch List: countries in which the number of victims is very significant or is significantly increasing, and fail to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat trafficking.

Action is necessary on a wide variety of fronts:

• A Nationwide Awareness and Prevention Program for communities being targeted by traffickers
• Effective toll-free hotline help (current staffing takes four days to answer)
• PPA units (Perlindungan Perempuan Anak – Children and Women Protection) need more training and budgets to investigate
• Seizure of assets needs to be a real threat for those indicted of trafficking
• Aftercare is needed: safe houses and half-way houses (SCF is building The Sanctuary, a therapeutic recovery center
• ToC for Organ Removal seems to be real, though is still under investigation and cannot be discussed now.
• An awareness and prevention campaign is needed in major tourist spots and within the expat community to combat Child Sex Tourism (CST), both by unregistered, situational sex offenders and prolific sex offenders known to authorities, and even long-term expats engaging in CSA.

Australia is one of the few countries with a sex offender registry linked to its immigration database, so they know that about 275 registered sex offenders come from Australia to Bali every month. There’s no data on traveling Asian sex offenders since their databases do not link with immigration.

Cyber CSA may become the biggest threat to children in Indonesia. A lot of cooperation will be needed among providers (Paypal, Google, etc.). The International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children is pressuring many Internet providers to report any indication of child pornography.

Natalia will be working with Rucina to prepare a proposal for RCBUS to assist the work of SCF, focused on awareness and aftercare programs.

Rosalind adjourned the meeting.

Apologies: Alisa, LLoyd, Sue W, Marilyn, Rick and Danielle (all in the US), Don and Sue B (somewhere in the Pacific), Antje (Germany), Augie (tending to the new business, Ubud Deli), Driya and Probo, Rustiasa, Jody, Kadek, Mary Jane (Singapore), Patricia, Tjok Raka

Guests: Autumn Reifensyder (Catalina Island, USA), Ruth Austin (Sydney, AU), Jenn Richardson (speaker) and her guest Cheryl.

Bruce & Fred inspect the architecture of the Torajan Tontonan House

Superb craftsmanship everywhere we looked

Rosalind and Bruce reported on the RCBUS Fellowship on Sunday at Puri Rangki, a cultural centre developed by Rucina and Agung. Guests caravanned to Rangki, about 35 minutes from Ubud. We admired the magnificent hand carved gates, beautiful antique statues and other elements of this Balinese cultural centre, including a garden with 30 kinds of frangipani. Rangki includes a river, holy spring,

Puri Rangki's sacred spring

swimming pool and buildings to rent for overnights. It’s a quiet, beautiful destination, and a dip in the elegant new pool was the perfect ending to our tour. Many thanks to Rucina and Agung for hosting this event!

Rotarian Stewart Martin from Oregon will be here at the end of April, addressing our club April 30 and off to Sumba with Cat on May 1 for 24 hours. Stew’s club headed a consortium that put together a matching grant for tanks and toilets in 2010. He is interested in learning more about Project Hope Sumba and perhaps providing more tanks and toilets. WatSan is his passion.

Our club is number four in the top 30 RCs in Indonesia! The criteria make a complicated formula of membership and fundraising, but however they count us, we’re impressed!

Gabe Monson presented on her Sumatra trip, where she spoke Indonesian almost exclusively for two weeks. She had a wonderful time, especially in Aceh, where she experienced nothing but friendliness and respect. Troubles with her computer sadly prevented showing her photos, so we’re including a selection here.

Gabe represents Western Womanhood at Ochie's wedding

First she attended Stephen and Ochie’s (founders of Cinta Bahasa) wedding in Padang. The Minangkabau culture is matrilineal; women own property, make the big decisions and as a woman visitor Gabe was well fed by the women in the Cooking Pot Group. Ochie’s auntie, the matriarch, decided that as Stephen had no female relatives present Gabe should be nominated as his honorary aunt for the duration. She was dressed appropriately and took part in the wedding procession which was very exotic and included Sufi drummers. Gabe genuinely felt that she was carrying the lineage of western women in the context of this cultural group.

Her next stop was Batak country and Lake Toba, where you can still get a nice lakeside room with

Lake Toba, with a sweeping Minangkabau roof behind the bougainvilla

hot water for Rp 30,000 in a hotel that went bankrupt after the Bali bomb.  The lake is extremely beautiful. Toba was the only place in Sumatra where she saw alcohol. Here she found a great diversity of architecture, from humble shacks to magnificent flying roofs of big houses in “lurid” colours and decorated with exquisite hand painted glass. There were as many houses for the dead as the living. The Lake Toba animist tradition honouring ancestors is still strong, with large ornate tombs everywhere.

In Aceh, Gabe wore the jilbab (head scarf) which the local people appreciated. Aceh pride is very strong, especially during her visit with an election going on. She found the buildings here, too, very colourful and brightly painted.

She was very impressed by the vast size of Aceh. Crossing the province by local buses with their huge sound systems, she grew to like dangdut music, which took her mind off death on the terrible roads. The drivers often would get out to inspect the roads before proceeding.The journeys seemed endless, crossing one mountain after another with forest everywhere. Aceh is rife with illegal logging and ganja, the use of which is which is part of the culture. Since the Acehnese don’t drink, they resent central government outlawing alcohol–they use it in cooking.

Crossing Sumatra by bus, Gabe finally arrived at Yayasan Bumi Sehat in Samatiga where Rotary Ubud had built a clinic and donated the ambulance. A sign announced that Robin had won CNN Hero of the Year award. The Clinic is used as a community centre as well as a medical centre. One of the cooks told her that she worked long hours because if she stayed at home, she was overwhelmed by memories of the earthquake and tsunami (Samatiga was close to the epicenter). She is one of just 4 members of her family of 80 that survived. Then Gabe traveled by bus up the west coast from Meulaboh to Banda Aceh, an area totally

Unoccupied house

destroyed by the tsunami. Every house built by aid agencies to provide housing for the survivors was exactly the same, and many are empty because they were built according to the number of families that used to be there, not the survivors.

In all, Gabe felt her trip to Sumatra was very rewarding in many ways.

Guest speaker Jenn Richardson then reported on her involvement with the Youth Centre of Bumi Sehat as one of two Australian Volunteers in Development working there. Robin is trying to achieve a link between gentle transition in birth and in the teen to adult transition. Jenn is Youth Center Advisor in Aceh, expanding English, computers and organic gardens programs into vocational training. (More on their existing Youth Center in Ubud here.)

Bumi Sehat was the first NGO into Samatiga, near the epicenter of the earthquake and an area which was almost completely destroyed by the following tsunami. Robin and her family buried bodies, provided a great deal of first aid and trauma relief as well as midwifery services. The first clinic was a little two-room bamboo shack, then a small 2 floor clinic was built, then RC Ubud built a permanent clinic.

The simple lives of the fishers and farmers of this coast were completely smashed. Jenn is surprised that people can still smile. There are many empty houses for rent at Rp 2 million a year. She hopes to rent several near the Youth Centre for international volunteers who pay to come.

Jenn asked the young people at the Centre what they would like to learn. They replied, “We are orphans, we would like to learn some of the skills we would have learned from our parents.” They want to learn sewing, hair dressing, computer and hospitality skills, brick making, yoga, music, recycling, motorbike maintenance and animal husbandry. The program is now in a transitional phase. It needs proper costings and 5-year plans to present to international donors to refurbish the building and establish the programs. A donor for 12 computers has been found. Jenn is looking for books, equipment, rooms and salaries for teachers and a manager.

Endearingly, the young people don’t want young volunteers. They want older people who represent family and stability.

The meeting ended with the drawing of the raffle prize, a textile fresh off the loom from Sumba donated by Cat and won by Rosalind.

He will be on Bali to visit a sustainable agriculture/erosion control project with the East Bali Poverty Project.

Attending: LLoyd, Bill, Cat, Janet, Don B, Sue B, Mandy, Fred, Bruce, Philip, Cheung Chu, Rosalind, Rucina
Apologies: Alisa (USA), Antje (Germany), Augie (tending to the new business, Ubud Deli), Driya and Probo, Rustiasa, Jody, Kadek, Mary Jane (Singapore), Patricia, Tjok Raka
Guests: Bruce “Bruno” Wilson and Carol Halonstad (both of RC Detroit), Bill and Judith Schneider, RC Foster City (USA)

This being our monthly meeeting for updates on projects and just good fellowship, no speaker was scheduled. And without our official photographer, Antje (off to Germany), minimal photos either. But we had an excellent meeting and happily went into overtime to share our skill sets and thoughts on the club.

First Sue & Don Bennett talked about the work of RC Woodside/Portola Valley (California), a small club which raises significant funds for projects

Belusung celebrates Woodside/Portola's books donation

in Guatemala, Palestine, and Bali. Their first project brought books and other educational materials to an elementary school in Umahanyar. Most recently they did the same for an elementary school in Belusung, described in last week’s Bulletin. During the delivery of books to Belusung, the principal asked if Rotary might be able to donate a hand-washing basin. Since there is some left-over money from Woodside, Sue will try to fulfill this request, on condition that the school provides the labor.

Judith and Bill are off to Australia, where they will enjoy some time in a home exchange. (And who wouldn’t want to trade for their condo in San Francisco!) She highly recommends this way of exploring a new place.

Janet & her Burmese

Janet’s been everywhere, on all kinds of missions. She’s just back from Bandung where she’s setting up a new fabric production facility to make “modal” fabric, which uses beech wood planted in marginal land in Europe. Next she’s off to Vietnam, chaperoning 16 kids from the Bali Kids orphanage! They’ll visit a training center for street children. The founder of that organization will be in Bali next week, when Janet will help him with fundraising. And with her little finger, she’s overseeing the completely revamped Goddess on the Go website where you can see her with her new Burmese kitty.

Natalia Perry

Rucina announced that Natalia Perry of Sacred Childhoods will be joining us again on April 16 for further discussion on the child trafficking issue, with specifics on how we can help. Ru has met with Natalia and been updated on the significant progress of her several projects.

Rucina reported on the monthly meeting of the Presidents and Secretarys of Bali’s RCs, which she and Rosalind attended on 30 March at Hotel Ratna in Kuta. Most Bali RCs were represented, and the array of projects they are all working on was impressive, both on Bali and adjacent islands. PDG Dr. Ritje explained the DDFs that are available and the FVP GG and DG Projects that are now being considered by the District. R & R returned with the great news that our DDF for this year will be rolled over into next year.

Rosalind held up RC Seminyak’s ‘club profile,’ a single sheet, double-sided, which they hand out to visitors at each meeting, which we want to replicate for RCBUS, and bless Bruce for offering his desktop publishing assistance.

Lloyd distributed copies of the Global Grant proposal for the HIV/AIDS project, and urged everyone to read it and ask the project committee any questions they may have. He praised the committee’s work and suggested we all consider it as an exercise in grant writing for any upcoming projects we take on.

Rangki's new pool - bring suits!

Rucina reminded us of the upcoming Fellowship at Rangki this Sunday, 8 April. Bring swimsuits for the new pool! We’ll meet at the petrol station in Pengosekan at 2:30pm to carpool and caravan. Please be in touch with Ru if you have or need a ride.

Lloyd then led a discussion by going around the table to ask, “What is your skill set and passion?” and “What one thing will you change about the club?”

• Bill P: has a finance background, and could help in structuring the club finances.
• Janet: has a large staff, capable of doing many kinds of tasks. She’d change the meeting time to early morning, like 6:30am maybe? [This was met with many groans and grimaces.]
• Bill S: has lots of experience with Rotary finances, and could audit our projects that involve The Rotary Foundation.
• Judith S: Numbers aare her strong suit and she could do a club audit; she’d like to see more younger men in the club.
• Don: has a background in computing and can do due diligence on technical need for schools, such as computers.
• Sue B: was a computer programmer and a board member of an elementary school; she is interested in being part of educational projects.
• Mandy: is a child psychologist and wrote children’s books in Egypt; she’d like to hear visiting Rotarian dignitaries talk about something besides money.
• Fred: has background as a management consultant; he likes the idea of ‘aging’ Rotaracts joining us, not just bringing their youth with them, but also their cultural insights.
• Bruce: used to be a programmer, and is “everything IT,” including doing SEO for a local company.
• Cheung Chu: is an architect, who has taught at university level and was the first volunteer architect in New York City.
• Bruno (visitor from Michigan): offered his snow removal services!
• Rosalind: has managed small businesses and their marketing projects; she wants to bring in more Indonesian members.
• Rucina : has been in Bali 29+ years, hopes the Rotaracts will bring more Indonesians into the club; she’d like an alternative meeting place from Hotel Maya. [more groans]
• Lloyd: had a career in design management, merchandising and product creation before opening his own business designing interiors for the luxury market, with a focus on recycling and renovating. Rosalind interjected that Lloyd also has a great gift for diplomacy. Lloyd wants to see the club promote an awareness of a different kind of giving, with both big and small projects, responding to community needs on different levels.
• Rucina asked the group about speakers; feedback was that Garrett needs to widen the focus of his monthly cultural series to include all Balinese culture, not just dancing.

• Judith asked the group to consider “what will you do if there is a body lying here?” I.e., how to deal with the death of a friend here in Bali. Lloyd spoke of being “a tribe, with a responsibility to take care of each other.” Lloyd and Rucina will start a ‘buddy’ database to take note of how people want their worldly remains managed.

Lloyd adjourned the meeting.