Tucked into a green elbow of Banjar Pengubungan in Kerobokan, the Sunrise Market brings a third organic produce outlet to Bali. A subsidiary of broad-based Yayasan MACK, the market is a focal point for many of the new organic and locally produced items now available for Indonesians and tamu who prefer not to ingest a cocktail of herbicides and pesticides with lunch.
Selling fruit and vegetable supplies from four farms, Sunrise Market also offers herbs, free range eggs, breads, organic fertilizers, vetiver grass and neem tree saplings, neem oil, sea salt, organic coffee, and Bali Asli preserves. I was intrigued to find several Balinese-produced cheeses, neem twigs (long used in India for dental hygiene and recently discovered to be effective against receding gums) and Ibu Kartini’s celebrated desiccated worm capsules. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch for some but there’s lots of good stuff here for those who can’t make it to the Andalan Health Food Stores in Ubud or Sanur.
What food really qualifies as organic? To this point, there are no certified organic growers in Bali because of the prohibitive cost of bringing in certifiers from Europe. So a few local growers recently formed the Bali Organic Growers Association (BOGA) to try and establish a baseline in the industry here.
Linda, an Australian qualified to certify, has established criteria for organic growers in Bali and is in the process of working with several growers on certification. There are currently three levels — Organically Certified, Organically Grown and In Conversion. Linda is also certifying organic growers in Malaysia and the Philippines.
"We are not trying to be exclusive," stresses Lee-Ann, co-founder of the Market. "We just want to ensure that the food we eat and feed our children is as chemical-free as possible." BOGA is happy to advise anyone who is interested in growing food organically.
Lee-Ann, who distributes the NeWays line of chemical-free personal care products, would like to see the Sunrise Market as a networking center to increase awareness about the chemicals found in food and other products we use every day. There is a small but growing library of information at the Market, and photocopies can be had for a small charge.
The Sunrise Market is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings between 8 and noon. It’s now possible to place orders by calling a day in advance. Wholesale and home delivery in the area are now also offered.
Just up the path and through a bedeg gate from the Market is lively little Sunrise School, open 18 months. Another project of Yayasan MACK, the school offers an international curriculum that incorporates Learnscapes, a multi-disciplinary teaching technique developed in Australia and now becoming popular internationally. Learnscaping utilizes local environments in ‘hands-on’ environmental care and repair projects. Whether the Learnscape is a logged rainforest, an organic rice field or a coral reef regeneration project, students and educators explore related themes and issues that are integrated across the curriculum in science, math, art, music, geography and social science. Project results are recorded by students on video and in data bases. The computer lab is now on line and in future students will research, organize and present what they learn to other students. The school is particularly fortunate in having Philip Booth as its principal. Philip has researched and extended the original aims of Learnscaping to involve teachers’ professional development.
With such a curriculum and philosophy, it’s natural that Sunrise School
campus should be a model of environmental stewardship. All the children automatically sort and recycle plastic, paper, metal and glass into appropriate containers. The school has taken part in both ‘Clean Up Bali’ campaigns. Students from grade 5 recently made a presentation on recycling to grades 3 and 4 at the Australian International School.
School lunches include as much food as possible from BOGA-approved farms. The school itself is a little farm, growing chemical-free fruit and vegetables for consumption at the canteen and sale at the Market as well as raising chickens, ducks and cows. The 80 students from 10 countries help maintain the gardens and care for the animals. The campus has evolved into a Learnscape where the students are taught to respect and care for the environment. Ideally, they will share these concepts with parents, staff and friends.
A wastewater garden was established by a team led by Dr Mark Nelson when the school was built to treat the wastewater from the school’s toilets. The small jungle of bananas, gingers, yams and heliconia is now flourishing, completely odourless, in the schoolyard.
Sunrise School has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Education and Teacher Training at Universitas Mahasaraswati (UNMAS) in Denpasar. UNMAS has begun to incorporate this method of project-oriented learning and hopes to adopt the concept into the National Curriculum. Sunrise School offers trainee teacher scholarships to four students from UNMAS, and has also formed partnerships with local schools at Ekasari and Batungsel to share resources and trial innovative approaches in educators’ professional development.
As a step toward working more closely with other schools on the island, Sunrise School is an active member of the Bali Heads of Schools Association, which is open to all schools in Bali. As an initial professional development activity, Philip led a workshop on Learnscaping.
Philip also hopes to negotiate a Memorandum of Understanding with the Botanic Garden in Bedugul, to raise rare and endangered lowland plant species at the school. "Raising seedlings of endangered and rare medicinal plants would involve the whole curriculum," he explains. "The students will learn about the environment, geography, climate, math, language, science, medicine and much more in the context of real world issues and situations."
Check out the energy in this lively little corner of Kerobakan. For information on the Sunrise Organic Market or to place an order, call 735824. To learn more about Sunrise School, visit its website at sunriseschool.com
