PRESS RELEASE: Australian Charity Bali Children Foundation gets creative to find ways to keep kids in school during COVID 19.

When COVID-19 struck, Margaret Barry was determined to help parents keep their kids in school – so that the next generation of leaders are not lost to the crisis.

Dame Margaret Barry OAM, DSJ, came to Bali, Indonesia, 30 years ago to start a business. As she stayed on and became more involved with the island and the people, it started to feel more and more like home to her.

In 2020, the Bali Bombing changed things dramatically on the Island. It was a pretty emotional time for Marg. She’d heard that the terrorists were victims of religious fundamentalism. She was familiar with the district they came from and knew it was an impoverished part of Java. Marg felt that these people probably had no hope for their future, and that had this been different, perhaps the bombing might not have happened.

Bali has plenty of villages up in the mountains, often a bit violent and terribly poor. Margaret felt they were very easy targets for a terrorist to recruit support. She decided to take swift action. She immediately established Bali Children Foundation and started her work in Bali’s toughest towns.

Bali Children Foundation started with scholarships for the most deeply disadvantaged. From there, they began working in the schools, developing a much stronger English curriculum. In these villages, by educating children over the last 18 years and getting them out into the workplace, the whole economic outlook has changed. BCF has had 1032 graduates go through the program. Each of these students is part of a family who has enjoyed the knock-on effects of higher family income, because their child now has improved employment capabilities.

Unfortunately, COVID has had a major economic impact across the island of Bali. At least 80% of the income in Bali, is related to tourism. Having no social net, people manage their income as best as they can. Now those who were already deeply poor are very much worse off. Those with part-time jobs working as gardeners in villas or even making baskets for the tourism industry are all now without any earnings.

For the middle class and the emerging middle-class, the results have been utterly catastrophic. They have suddenly been thrown into a situation with no income at all from having reasonably well-paid jobs. Families now have to choose between “eat or educate”.

To make sure the funding is there to get those kids back to school, the Foundation decided to develop a virtual challenge with the help of the aspirational social enterprise Bali Hope. They had over 200 people create challenges for themselves – mostly done remotely in nine countries. With some extraordinary efforts, there were 4 x 24-hour runs and a young man, Sean Bell from Victoria, ran 184 km in 24 hours. Margaret was very excited and thrilled. She says, “It makes me very keen to get out there and get the work done now that we’ve raised the funds.”

She also asks herself the question, “Do we have enough funds?” And muses, “We don’t know. We have enough funds to do our first job, which is to get these kids back to school.”

The big challenge for Bali Children Foundation right now is to make sure kids don’t drop out. The Foundation has spent 18 years working in communities to stem high-school dropouts. When they started, many of the communities ran 40% to 60% drop out rates. They were dropping out even in primary school. Over the last six years, Margaret tells us they’ve held their dropout rate at less than 2%, which is just exceptional. That’s enabled the Foundation to get many youngsters educated and into very good employment.

“What we do is relatively small. However, it can make such a massive difference to one family, and through that to a community and through that to a whole area”.

ABC picked up the story here:
https://iview.abc.net.au/video/AI2021H006S00?fbclid=IwAR2lPdrIkEROnuNCXmZF0P3drAElBbLrEZZQ0CvSviB-SbWDjlVV8PiHOkE
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CONTACT
For further media information contact:
Contact name: Deanne Bulstrode
Email: [email protected]
Phone number: 0436803636

Bali Children Foundation helps thousands of children to complete school, to find employment, and to improve their lives and the life of their community
Starting in 2002, BCF has worked one village at a time to help a total of 76 villages. After identifying a village with disadvantaged families, our local staff members work together with the village leaders to introduce families to BCF and the opportunities our scholarships and curriculum provide.