There’s a funky little shop in Ubud. Tucked away on Jalan Sri Widari, it has no electric lights or fancy displays. Customers include Balinese, expats, tourists with dreadlocks, local children, cross-dressers, visiting diplomats and the occasional polite canine. The merchandise is eclectic, changing on a daily basis. There are no discounts and no returns, yet it does a thriving trade.
The Smile Shop is Ubud’s (perhaps Bali’s) first thrift shop. The concept has proved wildly popular, drawing regular customers from as far away as Seminyak. Merchandise is gently used or new, and includes clothing, handicrafts, linen, toys and anything else generous donors leave on the doorstep.
The Smile Shop, opened in December 2006, is a project of the Smile Foundation (Yayasan Senyum Bali), which was founded to help poor Indonesians obtain surgery for facial deformities. Apart from rent, all the income from the Smile Shop goes to projects. Some is spent to meet the expenses of patients and their families who must travel to Denpasar for assessment and surgery, sometimes from other islands. Often the patient (usually a child) lives in a remote village and the family lacks the resources to even transport the patient and caregiver to Denpasar. Sometimes the deformity is so severe that they must travel to Australia for major surgery. The money earned by the Smile Shop meets costs of transportation, accommodation, food and other needs for these patients. The Yayasan supports a small residence (the Smile House) near the hospital in Denpasar where patients and their carers stay before and after surgery. The wages of the Smile House housekeeper, office manager, patient coordinator and outreach worker are also met from Smile Shop earnings. The rent of the Smile House was paid by a private donor.
The shop, run entirely by volunteers, is open every day except Monday. About 85% of shoppers are Balinese men, women and children looking for a bargain. The Foundation was hoping to raise US$10,000 in its first year, but due to the generosity of donors in Bali and the enthusiastic support of the store’s customers, the Smile Shop earned over US$23,000 in the first year of operation.“Volunteers make it possible for us to send the maximum amount of money to the Foundation,” notes Carrie, Smile Shop manager and volunteer coordinator. “And our Balinese customers get a kick out of being waited on by foreigners!”
Donations have included truckloads of new merchandise such as clothing, textiles and handicrafts from shops, boxes of used linen from the Bali Hotel Association and a mercifully endless stream of gently used clothing and household goods from mostly expat households.
Yayasan Senyum Bali was established in 2005 by Mary Northmore to serve as a bridge between Sanglah Hospital, the regional public hospital, and the Australian Cranio-Facial Institute in Adelaide. This free-standing unit is one of just two or three in the world. The Institute is headed by Dr David J David, who has worked for almost 30 years in Southeast Asia. Dr David and his anesthetist and nurse travel to Indonesia twice a year to hold clinics and together with Dr Asmarajaya, a gifted and compassionate Balinese surgeon, perform the life-changing surgeries and train local hospital staff in special procedures in Bali. The goal is to create centres of excellence for craniofacial surgery in Indonesia’s public hospital system in Bali (which will also serve East Nusa Tenggara), Jakarta and Surabaya. Surgery costs in Indonesia are met by funds from donors such as Rotary, Australian and British organizations and private donors.
“We’re trying to set up sustainable systems of health care delivery by training local doctors and nurses,” explained Dr David on a recent visit. “We come and deliver trainings in Bali and also bring Indonesian doctors to Adelaide to learn new techniques.” The Australian Craniofacial Unit in Adelaide offers this excellent program free of charge, so Yayasan Senyum only needs to find costs for the doctors’ language training, local costs (passports, visas, etc) and air tickets.
Facial deformities, the most common of which are cleft lip and cleft palate, occur once in about every 600 live births in most countries. When relatives marry, the incidence is much higher. The World Health Organization recently included facial deformities among the world’s top ten health issues.
A cleft lip is easy to repair, but anything more serious is a long term commitment. “Fixing faces involves much more than just a single surgery,” says Dr David. “It takes about 18 years of multidisciplinary management involving specialists in craniofacial surgery, bone grafting, orthodontics, hearing defects, speech therapy and other support as the child grows.” Yayasan Senyum monitors the children who will need further surgery.
Since 2005, the Smile Foundation has facilitated surgery for 134 people (12 more are awaiting surgery in Bali and Adelaide), including 73 from Lombok. Of these, 11 with severe deformities were sent to Adelaide for surgery. Such complex surgeries (most for deformities which are rarely seen in Australia) cost about A$250,000 each and the South Australian government most generously provides 15 such surgeries a year to Indonesians.
The Foundation began an outreach program last year to locate people in remote areas of Bali who need surgery. A young man was hired and trained at the Smile House. Using his home as a base, he makes day trips out to villages visiting public clinics, community leaders and midwives and talking to the local people before returning home each night. He found that by hanging out at the local warung chatting over coffee, he was able to overcome people’s reluctance to admit that a family member had a problem. He has been locating three or four patients a week in this way.
Personal appearance is important in all cultures, but perhaps a facial deformity causes the most acute personal suffering in a place like Bali, where physical beauty is so admired.
I was working my shift at the Smile Shop one Sunday afternoon about a year ago, folding a pile of shirts, when a young Balinese girl came and stood beside me. “Hello, I am Ayu,” she said shyly. “Hi, Ayu,” I smiled. Gently turning me toward a poster on the wall, she pointed to a photograph of a girl with a deformed face, then at herself. “I am Ayu,” she repeated more strongly. I barely recognized her. Standing beside me was a normal, pretty young woman with her life before her, only a small scar on her cheek to show where her jaw had been completely reconstructed. “I am Ayu,” she whispered again, looking at that ruined face in the photograph. Then she gave me a radiant smile and walked away. My heart broke and was mended again in that moment.
It’s just a funky little shop in Ubud but it helps change lives, profoundly. Please support the Smile Shop with donations of new or gently used clothing or other merchandise; call Carrie at 0813 3848 7498 for directions. Contact Mary Northmore for her Wish List at marynorthmore@yahoo.com or visit www.senyumbali.com to make a donation or to learn of other ways to help turn a life around.
