John Fawcett was born in Western Australia and lived most
of his childhood in the northwest Kimberley area. He was educated
at Hale School in Perth, and studied at Claremont Teachers
College and Perth Technical College in the fields of education
and art. John first came to Bali in 1974 on holiday with his
family. After that first visit, he regularly visited Bali
until 1981 when he suffered an accident which changed his
life and hospitalized him for nearly three years. To recuperate,
he returned to Bali in 1983, and has been recuperating ever
since! However, John has not been idle. He has spent the last
17 years helping the poor of Bali in various ways, and now
runs the humanitarian organisation, The John Fawcett Foundation
(JFF) based in Australia and its affiliate Yayasan Kemanusiaan
Indonesia (YKI) headquartered in Bali.
How and when did you first conceive of starting your foundation?
The first person to suggest that I help the Balinese was the
then Governor of Bali, Ida Bagus Mantra, who was a personal
friend. He said that I shouldn’t stay in Bali and do
nothing. I became involved first in children’s facial
reconstruction operations, using visiting medical specialists
to teach local doctors through an organization called Interplast.
What kinds of projects does YKI/JFF carry out?
All of our projects target the poor and are offered free of
charge. Most are medical projects. For example, our Sight
Restoration and Blindness Prevention Project provides eye
treatments such as cataract surgery in mobile clinics. We
also do children’s facial reconstruction, mostly cleft
lip and palate. We help children from poor families who are
desperately ill and whose families cannot afford their medical
treatment. Another project is our Education Assistance Program
where we support children so they can remain in school - especially
important during this time of economic downturn. A recently
established program is our TB Microscopy Training Program
which enables quicker and more accurate diagnosis of TB, a
disease that kills around 400 people each day in Indonesia.
Can you tell us a spectacular success story?
Let me give you just one example out of many. Today I attended
the post-operative checks on four very young children who
were cataract blind and were operated on yesterday. Today
they saw their mothers and fathers for the first time. That
is a very special experience. But even adults who see after
30 or 40 years being blind often make really fantastic comments
- one old woman recently told me, after her cataract operation,
that ‘all her family looked so old!’ I wondered
what she would think when she went home and saw her own face
in a mirror. In the Cataract Program we have operated on over
25,000 blind people and 380 babies. The lives of all of these
people and their families have been dramatically improved
as a result. Additionally, we have operated on about 1,400
children in the Facial Reconstruction Program - again, a life
changing operation.
Do you always have the full support of the communities you
work in?
The local village people are overwhelmingly receptive to our
programs. I have had a long-standing belief that expats must
always consider themselves tamu (guests) in this country.
We are privileged to be able to live here and to watch the
passing parade, but we should never assume that we are actually
a part of it. As a result, the foundation’s policy is
always to work within the government’s own health, social
and education departments, and to support these vigorously.
We don’t compete with these departments, but enrich
and support the existing services and facilities. Similarly,
in the villages we work through the kabupaten authorities
and the local bupatis.
From where do you draw your staff?
All our local staff are Balinese, and most have received at
least a part of their education in Australia. The only foreign
volunteers we use are medical specialists who cannot be found
locally. These specialists come to Bali for short teaching
sessions to impart specific medical and technical skills to
the local medical personnel.
Have you received much help from organizations in Indonesia
and abroad?
Yes. This is the crux of the extensive network our foundation
enjoys. For instance, our mobile clinic in South Kalimantan
is funded by an Indonesian-based multinational coal mining
company. We also receive great assistance from international
pharmaceutical companies, both in the form of medicines and
surgical consumables. We also have support from airlines,
shipping companies, local Balinese companies, the Australian
Embassy, Aus AID - the list goes on and on.
What are the greatest needs in making your foundation more
effective and far-reaching?
Increased funding to meet the burgeoning demands on our services.
We would love to be able to use the very successful model
of the mobile eye clinic in many other provinces in Indonesia,
where there are 3 million people waiting for cataract surgery,
80% of whom are too poor to ever pay for such an operation.
Indonesia has a blindness rate which is the second highest
in the world (next to Saudia Arabia).
How can people help your organization?
The most effective assistance people can give is funds. Most
of our administrative expenses are covered by a specific donation
from an Australian travel company, so at least 90% of all
other donations go directly to help the people in need. Donations
to our foundation are tax deductible in both Australia and
the USA (and soon the UK). People wishing to donate can visit
the ‘How You Can Help’ page on our website at
www.balieye.org <http://www.balieye.org/> .
For anyone interested in being considered for Siapa, please
contact : <pakbill2003@yahoo.com>
Copyright@2006 Al Hickey
You can read all past articles of Siapa
at www.BaliAdvertiser.biz
