Responsible Tourism

Community Development in Bali – matching skills to need

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Highlights

We offer a service of integrity to thinking people - people who want to use their skills and experience to make a real difference and know how and where their money is spent. You will work with, not instead of local people to help them manage their own futures.Bali is a beautiful island - but there is still much economic poverty and need. This project enables you to share that beauty whilst using your skillsto help communities address their needs.

Examples of Itinerary.

Every placement is tailor made matching volunteer skills and experience to community need - therefore there is no typical itinerary! You can be sure though that your input will be part of a considered and sustainable plan. Because we work with communities in a holistic way we need and can use almost all skills - from bicycle repair to IT - from community nursing to marketing

The following skills are needed on this project now

• Skills training to enable staff to work with and teach the local communities more effectively
• improving basic English language skills - helping the local staff to develop and practice their communication skills in English, both verbal and written
• improving computer skills - at all levels from basic to advanced
• assistance in development of organizational and basic business skills, including: problem-solving skills, presentation, negotiation, administration and organizational skills
• developing simple value-added products - such as preserves, t-shirts, handicrafts - and associated presentation and marketing skills
• health care professionals
• clean water management and alternative technology experts
Your work will be based in Sanurwhere the organizations office is situated and Buleleng. The Buleleng district in north Bali is known for its natural beauty, ancient culture and hospitable people. Along the north coast, in Lovina and Pemuteran, there are a few tourism developments, but the region remains largely undeveloped.

How this trip makes a difference

Each volunteer placement is tailor made to match volunteer skills to community need.'

Here is an example of an initial brief to a volunteer with business skills who worked on the project early in 2008 as written by our local partners-

‘We have technical training (e.g. development of fisheries resource management and conservation, and also techniques for collecting fish, and handling and packing them carefully, as they need to be kept in optimal health, ) and some very basic business training. But we think that the business training has not yet made an impact on what we want to achieve in terms of promoting a more sustainable and responsible trade. We think that this might be an area in which you can help, by looking into what is going on, identifying possible causes of non /under -achievement, and then perhaps suggesting ways in which the traders might be able to improve their businesses. Remember also that, while the traders at each level might have some business skills (since they have been running businesses of various sorts for years,) the collectors and in some cases also the middlemen who were once collectors, have no business training or skills, and some may never have been to school at all. And this is where one of the main problems lies.

Having zero business skills, the collectors catch, say 100 fish, 50 die and they get paid (if they are lucky) for the remaining 50, provided none of these fish are damaged. They do not understand the notion of the 50 rejects being money lost that could be in their pockets. Here is obviously where the collection handling skills etc training helps them, but they also need to develop a better sense of business, to stop them being taken advantage of by the traders further up the trade chain. Furthermore, they have no idea of saving money. The buyers even lend them money and/or equipment, knowing full well that they will probably never be able to pay it back. But the collectors are then obliged to repay their debts by selling to the trader/lender at an even lower price. (Remember also that it's the traders further up the trade chain who dictate the prices, and will go elsewhere if any of the collectors try to negotiate higher prices for the fish they catch and sell.) These factors conspire to keep most of them in debt spirals from which they can never emerge.

This problem requires a good understanding of the local context by looking at the way in which things happen in the trade, and then some creative thinking to give support in developing the capacity of the local initiative.

 

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