Economic Growth Indonesia Project #24179

East Bali Bamboo Bikes Social Enterprise Appeal

by Yayasan Ekoturisme Indonesia

East Bali Bamboo Bikes Social Enterprise Appeal

Project Report | Dec 4, 2017
BAMBOO WORKSHOP EVACUATED AS MOUNT AGUNG ERUPTS

By David Booth MBE | Founder & Trustee

Just over 2 weeks after our last report, violent earthquakes and tremors in the earth’s crust below Mount Agung indicated an imminent eruption of the Agung volcano, resulting in the government instructing on 21st September that all those living within a 12km radius of the volcano, which included all of the 19 hamlets in our village of Desa Ban, evacuate immediately to safer locations. Our Daya Bamboo Workshop, only 6km from the crater, was immediately evacuated and all our tools and equipment loaded onto the back of our pickup trucks and taken north to our relocated EBPP HQ at the Tianyar Timor house of Komang Kurniawan, EBPP Chairman and Team Leader, 15km from the crater, near the Amlapura-Singaraja coast road. The attached photos show our team moving the large copy lathe, also given a temporary new home at Komang’s house.

Fortunately, on the 3rd of October, our bamboo bike building was able to resume in a borrowed EWABI workshop in Canggu, just 4km from EBPP Denpasar office, as six of our Bamboo Bike team, who are from Pengalusan and Cegi hamlets (located on Mount Agung slopes 2,000 metres below the crater), evacuated their families to Government camps in Gianyar and Denpasar, and were eager to work! Deni Nugraha, our Bamboo Bike Team Leader, restructured the team, collected all the equipment needed from East Bali and the team continued building bamboo bikes!

After completing five bamboo Mountain Bike (MTB) frames for EWABI, our team built a bamboo tandem bike, designed by Deni and ordered by EWABI, which when completed was ridden around some of the key Denpasar landmarks to promote bamboo bikes, as shown in the photos.

Following the tandem, our bamboo bike team started initially building MTB’s which we will market and sell under our Vebacon social enterprise company, branded as “East Bali Bamboo Bikes”, and promote on our new website, (presently under construction), with orders already coming in from a UK customer, who will promote in England later this month and also a potential order from an Australian cycling club, who have asked for bamboo ‘city bikes’, which we are presently building. The key difference between the MTB and the city bike is the gears, whereby most city bikes are single speed, and the first we have built includes a small bamboo luggage rack at the rear, as shown in the photo.

Mount Agung Eruption Update: Mount Agung started erupting on 25th November with huge ash and gas clouds reaching as high as 7,000 metres above the 3,142 metres crater, prompting further immediate evacuations, due to the dangers of the ash falls and many lahars (thick cold volcanic ash slurry gushing down dry riverbeds throughout our village) for communities which had been allowed to return home on the 29th October. Whilst our team continues living with the uncertainties of if/when they will ever be able to go home, they continue building bikes in Canggu/Denpasar and hope that bamboo bike sales will increase their income so that they can offset the huge losses they have incurred due to rapid sale, at less than cost price, of livestock to save the lives of these helpless animals and income from cash crops, which are completely lost.

We sincerely thank all of our GlobalGiving donors who have helped make our community-based bamboo business vision a reality and hope you will join us in further developing the bamboo bike and other businesses to empower our Desa Ban communities, which we hope will very soon be led by EBPP schools high school graduates and foresee, depending on the Mount Agung situation, the bamboo bike business expanding to all of our communities. Towards this end, we are updating our “Build a Bamboo Workshop” campaign to seek seed funding for our Social Enterprise where all profits will support EBPP field activities, not only bamboo projects, but also for total community empowerment through bamboo based livelihoods business development.

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Sep 5, 2017
BAMBOO WORKSHOP MOVES TOWARDS FULL CAPACITY

By David Booth | FOUNDER & CEO

In recent months, our bamboo workshop has been developing towards full capacity, operating six days most weeks, with our bamboo bike building team now increased to 9, with the addition of 2 EBPP high school graduates from our Cegi School class of 2011.

Below is an overview of the bamboo workshop developments to improve the quality and capacity for producing bamboo bikes and other bamboo products, including new facilities added and additional resources needed.

A key essential for all bamboo poles before use is to ensure that as soon as harvested, they are cleaned and treated to preserve the bamboo and prevent termite infestation, and then dried to a moisture content of 6-8%. Here was where we experienced difficulties due to our often very humid and cloudy days at our Daya Bamboo Workshop area. I should clarify that Daya, at an elevation of about 950 metres above sea level, is in the valley between Mounts Agung and Abang, with temperatures that can range from an overnight low of 12 degrees Celsius to a high of 32 degrees in the same day, and due to its valley location, has quite high humidity and gets more rain and cloud than the remaining 18 hamlets of our mountain village.

To solve this problem, we built a 4m x 6m ‘drying room’ from matt black painted corrugated zinc sheets to absorb the heat, built pallet-type drying racks inside to stack the bamboo and installed a dehumidifier with fans at the rear to absorb the humidity and increase the temperature – resulting in achieving the desired moisture content of the cut bamboo poles after treatment in a just a few days – whereas before building the drying room, it could take weeks and not achieve the low moisture content required. Now, we can dry the bamboo and maintain the appropriate moisture content until the poles are needed for the next bike!

Our bamboo workshop team can now produce more bamboo bike frames each week but not enough! The main time consuming factor is sanding the epoxy & hemp joints, which can be significantly reduced by equipping our workshop with special pneumatic sanding and other tools and a powerful enough air compressor, for which we are now seeking further funds.

We achieved these results through the amazing support of our Global Giving Crowdfunding donors and we sincerely hope you can now help us reach our funding goals to fully equip the Bamboo Workshop, and offer prospects for sustainable livelihoods for local youth showcase the unique properties and benefits of bamboo as one of the most sustainable and eco- friendly resources on the planet.

Thank you

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Jun 5, 2017
EBPP Bamboo Workshop

By David Booth | Founder, Trustee & CEO

East Bali bamboo bike

In the 3 months since our last report, the bamboo workshop with its 6 metre long open-sided covered extension has been a thronging hive of activity 6 days a week, with our seven local bamboo team diligently learning and in the last 6 weeks, producing very high quality bamboo bikes and bamboo bike frames for our new Denpasar based partner.

In our previous report, we mentioned our first black bamboo bike order which took longer than expected due to the custom design required by the client and was completed in April and turns eyes wherever it is ridden (see photo). The front and rear bamboo baskets are a work of art, created by our expert bike builder, Deni Nugraha, and a project that I deemed too difficult, but went like clockwork!

With the bamboo bikes now in production, the music instruments orders moving along, the well-equipped bamboo workshop has enabled EBPP to realise a key vision of a successful bamboo business, developed in partnership with the late Ms Linda Garland, where some of our recently graduated high school students will start work as ‘apprentices’ and eventually, with the skills they develop, will be able to start preparing bamboo bike components in their own community, with jointing and finishing executed in the workshop, for bikes that will be marketed by our newly created Social Enterprise, “East Bali Bamboo Bikes”.

None of this would have been possible without the wonderful support of our generous GlobalGiving crowdfunding donors and other supporters who donated direct to our bank account. The selection of photos show many of the amazing activities now possible in our amazing bamboo workshop, bringing a new sense of pride to EBPP team and the local communities who are excited to get involved and learn, many with the hope of becoming bamboo business entrepreneurs.

The photo selection here gives a snapshot of recent bamboo bike building activity centred around our bamboo workshop and surrounded by bamboo

Deni proudly sits on new bamboo bike prototype

Early stages of bamboo bike frame, outside worksho

Black baamboo bike with front & rear bamboo basket

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