At the beginning of this year, Canadian International School Singapore (CIS) collaborated with Ecofieldtrips for a service project in Amed Village, Bali. This project was for Pak Lana, a local village farmer, who fell from a coconut tree whilst harvesting coconuts 5 years ago and has been paralyzed ever since. He has been bed-bound and confines to a single room since the accident. Currently, through the help of Bali Sehat and Ecofieldtrips, he has a more comfortable house, a wheelchair, and a proper hospital bed, which has improved his living situation. However, there was no proper ramp for him to leave his house as the house was built on a higher elevation. Therefore, Ecofieldtrips and CIS planned to build a wheelchair ramp from his house to the garden and a path to the temple, located about 50m above the house.
Pak Lana
Construction of path
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, CIS was unable to go ahead with the trip but the project was completed by our Ecofieldtrips team along with Pak Lana’s family and friends. Despite our limited manpower, we managed to split the tasks and complete the job over a 3 day period. With some focusing on carrying rocks and dirt from the bottom of the hill to the top, others carried cement bags and water for mixing. It was a challenging project under the blazing hot sun but with everyone working together, we had a very successful completion. This experience has trained both the Ecofieldtrips team and local villagers on the important aspects of team-work.
After long mornings of work, we were all very excited to receive our specially prepared food sent from our accommodation, Wawa-Wewe II Villas. They were so sweet in making sure that everyone’s dietary needs were met and being eco-friendly by wrapping our food in banana leaf instead of plastic packaging.
Pak Lana and his family in ceremonial clothes
The outcome was fantastic, especially when Pak Lana and his family could go together to the temple to celebrate Galungan, one of the biggest ceremonies in the Balinese calendar, the week following the completion of the path. It was an amazing sight to watch his family beaming with joy, dressed in their beautiful ceremonial clothes as they were finally able to bring him to the family's temple after 5 years! This path and ramp building is very important to Pak Lana and his family, as his greatest wish was to go to his family’s temple to pray and engage in other religious activities. As going to a temple, praying, making, and presenting offerings is vital to all Balinese, Pak Lana is now able to leave his house and head to his family's temple easily with the existing ramp and path. Not only has Pak Lana’s life, but this service project has also completely changed the community’s life and made life easier for them to live daily.
In essence, service learning is a way of teaching and learning that benefits not only the students but the surrounding community as well. It works by teaching concepts in the classroom, which can then be applied within a community - mutually benefiting everyone involved. Service learning requires students to not only apply their learning to real-life scenarios but fosters reflection on their learning to learn more deeply about real-life practices of critical concepts such as empathy, service, and trustworthiness.
Our construction team and their completed ramp!
Luissandy – EFT Biologist
