Sustainable development – the East Bali poverty project

Sustainable development is an essential objective for all governments, whether tasked with leading a fully industrialised country or grappling with the challenges faced by developing countries. Efforts to deal with some of the major issues of the world that have loomed over the past few decades such as water and sanitation and poverty, the scale of which has primarily resulted from very large population growth over the past half century, have generally failed. This is particularly noticeable in the fast industrialising countries of Asia and in parts of Africa. In more recent times, it has been recognised that resolution of poverty problems really only succeed if the people requiring assistance are directly and fully embraced in the solutions needed, along with the approaches and procedures adopted to tackle the problems. In this paper, details are presented of the approach taken to respond to the aspirations of a desperately poor community of 15 000 in a remote area of Bali, Indonesia, with difficult access, and raise it to a situation of sustainable development. In the beginning the elders of the community prioritised education for their children as a means of providing for a better future. Before the children could respond properly, serious health issues had to be addressed, and this meant taking a long-term and holistic view with a matching schedule of parallel infrastructure and social programmes, and full participation of the community. This privately funded integrated development is now in its eleventh year, and the many challenges and solutions to achieve sustainable development are described. The project provides many lessons for adaptation, and is already providing selective assistance elsewhere.