East Bali Bamboo Bikes Social Enterprise Appeal

In the last 3 months, our dedicated bamboo artisans have not only been very busy building more bamboo wheelchairs, city, MTB and balance bikes but have also turned their design-and-build skills to creating emergency temporary bamboo A-frame housing for the communities living nearest Mount Agung volcano crater.

As six of our bamboo social enterprises artisans live in Cegi and Pengalusan hamlets, only 5 kilometres from Mount Agung’s active crater - which has erupted at approximately 6 day intervals in recent months - they worked at weekends, with their communities, to build an initial group of 30 houses on empty land at our Tianyar base camp, generously sponsored by the Mount Agung Relief (MAR) team, led by Mr Rio Helmi. Experts cannot predict if or when a major eruption may occur, but we must be prepared to support our communities in case of urgent evacuations. These sturdy 6 metre x 4 metre A-frame houses are built from local bamboo, which we treat for termite resistance and can house up to 7 people comfortably, with a shaded terrace for cooking and relaxing. When no longer required, they can be easily dismantled, transported and rebuilt, ready for quick removal in case of further emergencies.

Bamboo wheelchairs project: We’ve now designed and built 3 unique bamboo wheelchairs, one of which was recently handed over to a severely disabled boy in Cegi hamlet, his father being the key artisans who built it with love, ensuring that all dimensions were tailored to suit his son’s needs.

Balance bikes update: Interest in our beautiful hand crafted bamboo balance bikes has peaked recently, with our latest buyer, Brad, sending the following glowing review: “We have been working with David, Deni and the EBBB team on an exciting project for a few months now, and every time we would go their offices in Denpasar we would always admire the 2 beautiful bamboo bikes on show. However, on this one occasion we had our 5 year old son who completely fell in love with the bamboo balance bike and so we decided to buy it. However, rather than keep it at home we decided to rather keep it in our Eco Living Bali (Plastic Free) Shop. While my son would much rather have the bike at home, at least now he has a toy to play with when we are at the shop”. And from his happy son, Cal: “The small bamboo bike is the coolest bike I have ever seen!”.

Last but not least, we hosted an international documentary team who spent some days shooting to tell our story. We hope to share this with you all in our next report.

Thank you once again to all our GlobalGiving family of supporters and we hope that you will continue with your generosity so that we can train a group of our recent high school graduates to become skilled bamboo artisans and create bamboo businesses within their communities that East Bali Bamboo Bikes and East Bali Poverty Project will support with training quality control and marketing