In Reply to: Filo or Allen posted by shaddup on Sunday, 18. February 2007 at 16:22 Bali Time:
however, we've run into problems with this before. Once before when we were looking to rebuild an entire school, the govt intervened & stopped us bringing in outside labour as it was taking work away from the local trades. Ended up with them providing the labour & we provided the materials.
Some of the schools have limited electricity, so computer use is just as limited.
In most cases, if the labour can be found within the community, we are better to employ them.
On occasions we have had teachers offer their time and we've been prepared to take up the offers but only if they would live within the village for an extended period of time & have found billets for them. This way everyone gets to socialize outside of school hours & cross-interact in a real cultural exchange. None took us up on the offer & we dropped it. Not sure if the diet/squat toilets/bathing had anything to do with it.
At the end of the day, it was the visa requirements and insurance that killed it for us, but this would not be an issue if the individual tradespeople make their own arrangements direct with the school or orphanage.
I was only discussing this sort of thing in Bali last week wanting medical teams to come up. It has to be something that cannot be carried by local professionals, unless it is in a Training Scheme. Even then, it has to be approved beforehand.
The idea is great and I'm more than prepared to help if I can. Please don't let me put a dampener on anybody trying to help.
We have received so many knockbacks, it's just not funny. It is far easier if you do these things on a small scale. We enter into a Memorandum-of-Understanding on most of these projects. That hampers us as much as it helps, but we can't afford to jeopardize it.
We undertake purchase everything from Indonesians, or at least 'Made in Indonesia'.
Marc, you're doing a great job here in opening up these discussions. Where's Helen and Jacqui when I need them?
Cheers
Noel