Volunteer Programs Bali welcomes numerous volunteers as well as internship students. Maud and Vianne from Holland, both 22 years old, are studying health and nutrition and chose Volunteer Program Bali to perform their research on the snacking behavior under Balinese children. During their research they have learned a number of things such as the fact that Indonesia is 7th highest in the world in terms diabetes. Based on their research results they developed a workshop program to teach the students as well as the staff of Volunteer Programs Bali. The main goal of this program is to raise awareness about health, nutrition and healthy snacking.
During their research the girls realized that there is still a lack of knowledge among Balinese people about nutrition and health. For this reason Maud and Vianne started with applying their workshop in our schools, which turned out to be a success. The workshops were designed to teach the children from our programs about this theme in a fun and creative way. Hence, Maud and Vianne grabbed the attention of the children by using simple material such as flashcards, cardboards and drawings to create a fun and creative teaching game. They did this with the help of the staff from Volunteer Programs Bali.
Health and nutrition as a topic is very important for our local community. Indeed, teaching English is one of our main activities, but we also want to provide activities that is going to increase inspiration, development and empowerment for the local community with the help of our interns, volunteers, and staff. Awakening the local community about healthy eating is a first step to provide them a longer, happier and healthier life. As with all our activties, Volunteer Programs Bali has utmost respect for the local culture and traditions. We fully understand that we can`t change snacking behavior overnight, but with encouraging and educating our students in our programs, we aim to raise the awareness. Working with foreign students on specific topics like these is one of our goals for sustainability and growth with the local community.
“We believe that if more people in Bali come and do these kind of workshops a more of an impact will be given to the children that live here”, Maud and Vianne said. Also they were impressed by the program and how the volunteers are interacting with the children of Bali who are attending the English classes at Volunteer Programs Bali. Because of their hard work, motivation and impact we believe that the more people from this department attend and continue with these workshops, the more efficient these workshops can be. We will have more internship students in the future working on topics like these and we are establishing a long-term relationship with universities in Europe to support us.
We are grateful to have welcomed Maud and Vianne here with us and thank them for all the hard work and effort towards our local organization!