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| BaliWise Hospitality training |
Today we visited
BaliWise. The NGO is setup to empower marginalized women, conduct environmental education and teach skills to young girls in preparation for work through their sustainable jobs program. The training arm of the foundation graduates approximately 120 young women per year. They are in residence for six months with room board, pocket money, and training provided. They are then followed for an additional three months after they have been placed in a hospitality related field. Today we got to meet two of the girls and I met the job placement specialist who recruits hotels and resorts as this is the largest industry in Bali to employ the young women. They prepared and served our lunch and a morning snack.
The Zero Waste Centre that we visited is the public education arm. There were stations for weaving, dyeing, upcycling of soap, oceanography, and recycling.
Soap upcycling program
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| Soap upcycling program |
Hotels in Bali give their unsused soap when the packaging has become too old to be able to give to hotel guests and travel size used soap. The soap is brought to the Zero Waste center shaved to clean it(used soap), chopped up into little bits, weighed, aloe is added (optional), put into a mold and pressed and cut and packaged. According to our hosts today 7 tons of soap are thrown away every year that ends up in the ocean each year polluting the ocean.There are 50 hotels in Bali that participate in this program and pay $50 per month for the soap to be taken away.
Fabric such as old sheets are also upcycled from the hotels.
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| Women's business development weavers |
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| weaving practice |
Weavers are part of the women's business development program. Women weavers create intricate designs with nylon or cotton(rang-rang) that are then sold allowing them to make a living to support their families. At the facility that we visited today we got to see weavers completing
RangRang designs . Rang-rang is only done in this specific part of Bali. I got to weave on one of the simpler designs.
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| environmental educator with a piece of sappan bark |
As part of our visit today we actually got to use a natural dye to dye our own fabric using wood block as a resist. We learned about the various natural plants gathered some off of the property and each were allowed to dye two pieces. These are mine before goign into the dye bath. We did two dye baths, a yellow and a red. Tumeric and catappa leaves were used to create the yellow color. Sappan bark was used ot create the red color.
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| natural dye preparation |
Our evening culminated with a visit to a Barong dance production . Barong is a cat like creatue in Balinese mythology. The dance this evening was the story of the constant battle between good Barong, leader of the hosts of good) and evil (Rangda, demon queen and mother of all spirit guarders). The performers this evening included my Balinese dance teacher from a few days ago and her husband.
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| Henry and I met Barong |
Day 5
As part of our visit today we actually got to use a natural dye to dye our own fabric using wood block as a resist. We learned about the various natural plants gathered some off of the property and each were allowed to dye two pieces. These are mine before goign into the dye bath. We did two dye baths, a yellow and a red. Tumeric and catappa leaves were used to create the yellow color. Sappan bark was used ot create the red color.
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