Bondalem Project is a project that R.O.L.E. has been assisting for more than two years now. The project has its focus on teaching suitable practices for localized waste strategies, building the skills of local people, and local campaigning for sustainable change.

Short history

Bondalem is a coastal village in the north of Bali, Subdistrict Tejakula, Buleleng Regency. Initially, the Bondalem Eco Village Project was a 2-year project from January 2018 until January 2020, initiated by Matthew Ellks, Kadek Madja, Nyoman Adi Sancaya, Wira Darma, Gede Nursasadu, and three persons from the village.  The goal of the project was to make Bondalem a clean and healthy village with sustainable jobs and businesses without leaving the beautiful Hindu-Balinese culture behind.

Unfortunately, the project got delayed due to a lack of funding. R.O.L.E. Foundation strongly sympathizes with the project’s goals and kept looking for funding. By the end of 2019, with the help of WasteAid, R.O.L.E. successfully earned enough funding from Bunzl to continue this project.

The project’s goals

The project will run for one year starting February 2020 until February 2021. In that range of time, the aim of this project is to prevent plastic pollution in Bali through developing sustainable livelihoods in waste management and recycling, starting from Bondalem. The following milestones will be achieved:

  1. Improve the existing waste management site and make it sustainable
    Bondalem already has its own waste management site (TPST 3R in Indonesian) but this site still needs to be improved. We will bring recycling machines and establish a waste bank so people can separate their waste. The workers at the site will be educated with ecological knowledge and waste management training from R.O.L.E..
  2. Build ecological knowledge of the community by educating the kids
    Based on R.O.L.E.’s Public School Training Program, the schools of Bondalem will receive additional environmental education. So far, there are three prospects of school that can be our partners. One of them already agreed to collaborate with R.O.L.E.’s teaching curriculum.
  3. Establish an Eco Hub
    The plan is to have a place where like-minded people that have passion in the environment can gather, especially in the North part of Bali. This Hub can advance projects from the North of Bali into the discourse of environmental issues in general since the focus has been more likely in Bali’s South.

Participants of the project

R.O.L.E., with the help of Piet Van Zyl from Positive Impact Forever, functions as manager of the project and helps with the training. Meanwhile, Matthew Ellks, Kadek Madja, and the team in Bondalem will do the execution of the project at the site. When the project is finished, the Bondalem community itself will continue the work. They have the knowledge of what to do, and more importantly, why it needs to be done. After all, it is their community that they are improving.

What happens in R.O.L.E. while this project is ongoing

R.O.L.E. also improves its waste management and recycling capacity to reach the aim of this project. It means that R.O.L.E. will have something new in its Community Environment and Skills Centre. Find out what that is in the next blog post!