BIS and East Bali Poverty Project: donations for Mount Agung refugee camps

Dear BIS community,

Thank you very much for coming together this week to support some of the many tens of thousands of people that have been displaced. Thanks to your efforts, we have collected an impressive amount of items that are now being dispatched to the camps most in need. BIS has chosen to partner up with the East Bali Poverty Project (EBPP), a local charity already well established in the Mount Agung area. The EBPP is in a position to liaise directly with the local banjar, to assess which camps need the donations the most, and to dispatch items accordingly. Among those areas is the village of Les, which our IB diploma students already support through their EOTC /CAS trips, by selling the salt they produce, rehabilitating the local coral reef, and teaching English in local schools.

Since the situation caused by the likely eruption of Mount Agung is likely to last several weeks, or indeed months, it is our intention to organise further donation drives, the first of which will take place the second week after the October Break. We will seek advice from our partner before deciding which items should be focused on. Additionally, many BIS students are currently preparing their own response to the crisis by planning a variety of fundraising events, as well as their voluntary service in the evacuee camps around the Sanur area. In the midst of this upheaval, and in the absence of formal schooling, the children in camps are in very much need of diversion and entertainment. To that effect, a volleyball game has been organised at BIS on Wednesday the 4th of October, during which BIS students will play with some of the children currently living in the Jalan Danau Tempe camp. We hope to make this a regular occurrence in the coming months, and to take volunteer BIS students to the camps in order to offer some creative arts workshops and English tuition.

Again thank you for all your efforts thus far, and we hope to continue to work together to improve the lives of those who had to flee from their homes.

Sylvain Delhommeau
IBDP CAS coordinator