A few words
About Us
History
DAMARA BALI FOUNDATION.
DAMARA is a non-profit organisation, founded by I Nengah Swikrama, and proudly supported by Villa Bugis. Our main aim is supporting a better life for the children from poor farming families in Bali.
Damara Bali Foundation was established in 2015 and registered as a non-profit Indonesia Foundation (Yayasan) with the Indonesia Ministry of Law and Human Rights Indonesia No AHU – 0006690.AH 2015.
Swikrama grew up in an orphanage and received education thanks to the support of other people’s generosity. He has worked for over 30 years to assist children living in orphanages. For the last 8 years before starting Damara he was the Director of Widhya Asih, managing an organisation that provides homes and education to over 500 children and helps with many community projects.
Now with the Damara Bali foundation, work continues to help the economically disadvantaged children in Bali.
Our approach
The number of children in orphanages in Bali goes up year by year. Over 90% of the children are not orphans but their parents are simply too poor to provide for them. Almost all these children are from poor farming families in the north and east of Bali.
Most tourists only see happy smiling Balinese, but are surprised to learn that even if the government supposedly provides free schools there are many children who drop out of school because the parents can’t afford to pay for basic needs such as books and uniforms.
Damara Bali Foundation has the aim to empower poor families to have income to support their children in their own homes and have enough money to send the children to school. We believe that it is most important to support children and their families in a way that helps them to stay together, enabling children to be protected inside a stable, loving family unit and within a strong, empowered community.
Damara aims to be a well run organisation with very low administration costs (as all administration resources are donated by Villa Bugis) and that 100% of donations are used to directly benefit people in need. Our larger projects are set up to be self sustainable and not dependent on ongoing support from sponsors.