I love Bali…having been there about 6 times in the past 20 years- it used to be on the way to and from the UK when it was a regular stopover for the major airlines, pre-Bali Bombing-I have always admired the beauty and positive nature of the people.
It is very interesting how- despite the massive onslaught of tourism- their Hindu-Animist culture survives and even thrives, beyond the gamelan driven tourist shows, in a deeply superstitious and ritual bound society…a ritual for everything performed with grace and beauty, from the delicate woven offerings with rice and tropical flowers to the seemingly endless full on colour and noise temple ceremonies.
The people are gentle, positive and and friendly, and their island paradise green and beautiful too- but lately the bulldozers and rapacious building are starting to nibble away at the very thing that visitors come to see…the tranquillity shattered by jackhammers and building traffic.
There is still beauty to be found though if you move into the deep countryside, with delightful snapshot moments of ducks in a row being herded through the fluorescent green lush rice paddies, and of course the myriad iridescent rainbows of dragonflies.
It is interesting and very sad to see that there is a flip side to this postcard of paradise though, in the appalling abuse and malreatment of the mentally ill who are often chained in isolation by their relatives very simply, not out of deliberate cruelty, but simply having no medical options available to treat them.
I watched an SBS television documentary on this recently ,I have to say it broke my heart to see this,and I resolved to try and help in some way, primarily by supporting those to care enough to be active, and DO something on the ground, such as the wonderful Indonesian psychiatrist, Dr. Luh Ketut Suryani ,who is working in a desperately underfunded ( self funded actually) programme to help these people that society- and the government who has recently cut their meagre funding- has no room for. Have a look at her website, it is fantastic, and we strongly encourage you to directly donate should you wish to.

We as a business we have locally supported Breast Cancer, Cancer Council, Lifeline, Brightside Sanctuary and other animal charities, but  resolved some time ago to also support external causes that primarily help women, for obvious reasons really- we are lucky enough to have the freedom and money to use disposable income to buy ethical, environmentally sound products, but most of the world’s poor women in developing countries do not have clean water, or enough food, let alone the kind of financial/educational freedoms that we take for granted.

We are so very lucky in Australia- having been to Vietnam, India, and South East Asia over the years the hard life that women lead in these cultures leave you feeling very privileged, and slightly ashamed of complaining about our daily perceived  ”hardships”- but the joy that these women share with you, despite their circumstance, just makes your heart swell with pride at the resourcefulness, persistence and ingenuity of womankind.

The primary focus for me in terms of intent has always been the Fistula Hospital in Addis Abbaba (Ethiopia) which was established by the incredible Australian Dr Catherine Hamlin in 1959, to help women who have developed a fistula due to tearing during childbirth- rather than going into detail, click on the the link to find about this appalling condition, that is eminently fixable.

What struck me like a fist in the chest is that these women, who leak urine/faeces through no fault of their own, are totally ostracised within their communities- often days walk from the nearest bus, who in any case will not carry the women because of the involuntary smell and mess….some have lived apart from their communities for years.

My friend S ( to protect her confidentiality) who has volunteered recently with Medecins Sans Frontieres in Ethiopia ( amongst other nations) has said that it was one of her hardest assignments simply due to the general malnourishment of the population, particularly of course the women who as a result of this lack of nutrition are not able to develop a strong enough pelvic girdle to birth successfully without this complication ( fistula)in many cases.

The decider for me was reading in one of the Australian weekend newspapers about a woman who begged for 7 years in a local bus station to just get the bus fare to distant Addis Abbaba and the potential salvation of the hospital.

I think I cried for a week when I read that.

I am not religious but…Thank God for Dr Catherine Hamlin.

So…we are going to do something about making real and concrete donations from the sale of the products that you love, to help these two organisations concretely and directly.

YOU CAN HELP- WE CAN DO IT!! We will keep you informed as to how is going, with more detail soon, probably linked to our Facebook page so that you can see directly what is happening.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 2:07 pm and is filed under About Beauty and the Bees, Ingredients, giving back. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.