My old Scots grandmother used to tell us that whenever we felt sorry for ourselves, the fastest way to get over it was to do something kind for someone else.
When Australian teacher and artist John Fawcett came to Bali over 30 years ago, he was struggling to recover from severe complications of a medical procedure that almost killed him. But instead of turning inward to mourn what he’d lost, he became a catalyst that has changed the lives of thousands of poor Balinese. The John Fawcett Foundation today supports a broad base of humanitarian projects in Bali, Lombok and Kalimantan.
A child born with a cleft lip or cleft palate is severely disadvantaged anywhere in the world, but especially in Bali where physical beauty is highly prized. Starting in 1989, John Fawcett started a program coordinating volunteer surgeons from Australia to perform operations repairing cleft lips and palates in Bali. To date, over 1350 children have undergone surgery. The operations cost between Rp 3 – 4.5 million and take place whenever a donor can be found. Currently there are about 60 children on the waiting list.
About 45,000 Balinese are blind. Sixty percent of these have cataracts, a condition that can be brought about by age, poor diet, chronic dehydration or other causes. A great majority of these people are farmers, and the cost of surgery — or even a journey to the city — is impossible for them. In 1991 a team of Australian Rotarians donated a mobile eye clinic for cataract surgery. Balinese ophthalmologists and nurses were trained and the clinic began to visit villages, assessing patients and performing up to a dozen cataract operations a day. The surgery takes 30 minutes and costs about US$ 35 which is paid through private donations to the Foundation. Lenses, drops and antibiotics are donated from Australia. Over 14,500 Balinese have regained their sight through the Rotary Eye Program since it began.
But by 1996 it was evident that there were many children with eye problems that couldn’t be treated on the bus under a local anesthetic. A disused leprosarium was found and converted into a Community Eye Hospital. Using equipment and supplies from Australia, foreign volunteer surgeons and Australian-trained Balinese staff see about 3,200 patients a month and have performed about 8,000 operations.
Another mobile eye clinic based in South Kalimantan is administered by the Foundation but fully funded by PT Adaro, a coal mining company which is partly Australian owned. The clinic’s doctor, trained by one of Australia’s top ophthalmologists, has conducted 1376 eye operations since May 2003.
At the time of the bombing when the Australian government asked the Foundation what was needed to improve medical facilities on the island, it requested two new mobile eye clinics and a dedicated eye centre. One mobile clinic will replace the original one, now retired. The other will serve the poor north coast of Bali, performing about 100 eye operations a month. And by the end of 2005, the Australia-Bali Memorial Eye Centre will open in Denpasar, providing free treatment to the poor and training young Indonesian ophthalmologists to do cataract surgery.
Another major program is the establishment of a training laboratory for tuberculosis, a disease which kills 400 Indonesians a day. According to WHO figures, 205 Balinese die of TB every month. Of the 600,000 new cases a year, 80% fall into the most economically active age range of 15 to 54. The TB laboratory will provide a 6-year training program for advanced diagnostic techniques and a centre for patients undergoing free treatment.
The Foundation also offers assistance to desperately ill children from poor families. Many children born with severe birth defects die in Bali every year, as do children suffering severe illnesses. The program meets the cost of life-saving procedures for those who can’t afford to pay. Dozens of children from Bali and other islands are alive because of the Foundation.
In the cash-poor communities of rural Bali, even elementary education can be a crippling expense. A non-medical Foundation program provides poor families with a small fund with which to keep their children in primary school. Private donations of Rp 1,000,000 are placed in a bank account in the family’s name, with authority to withdraw Rp 50,000 a month for school books, fees and uniforms. This fund keeps a child in school for two years, and abuse of the system has been rare.
There’s more – much more. A school blindness prevention program. Corneal grafting. A wheelchair program, literacy and numeracy and clean water in remote villages. A program distributing donated spectacles. Wherever the John Fawcett Foundation goes, lives get better.
The Foundation and its Indonesian counterpart Yayasan Kemanusiaan Indonesia are run out of John’s private home in Sanur. Eye charts are tacked up on almost every wall. In the office are posted the arrival times of volunteers and medical supplies flying in on Air Paradise, which is a generous supporter of the Foundation, as is the Garuda office in Perth.
John Fawcett himself is a radiantly happy man who takes large pleasure in the dramatic improvements he sees daily in people’s lives.
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It’s exciting – the more you have in the way of facilities, the more you can do,” he points out. “We put a strong emphasis on training and working within government infrastructure. We only treat the poor and we don’t charge them. But we urgently need donations to keep all these programs running. We only use 10% of donations for administration.”
For a comprehensive overview of the Foundation’s work, learn how to make a donation and to view photos of children awaiting cleft lip/palate operations and other projects, please visit www.balieye.org
