WOW BALI INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE

WOW Challenge!!!Adventure Learning Tour with UnCollege: A “Sustainable Dynamics” Voluntourism Vision in Tulamben & Amed, Bali

Following the success of the Adventure Learning Tour in October with International youth delegates from FEALAC and WOW Youth Champions in sustainable tourism practices in Seminyak and marine conservation in Pemuteran, Buleleng, WOW Bali of Yayasan Global Banjar Internasional, an International initiatives on sustainability and wellness based in Bali, Indonesia is organizing another Adventure Learning Tour involving UnCollege students. Part of “Voyage” program where youths takes a gap year between high school and college and/or any one year between college to find themselves and what they really want to do in life. WOW Bali offers this unique social entrepreneur program via our Internationally recognized “Sustainable Dynamics” framework to this voyage of self-discovery. This time, volunteers will go to community development and reef conservation projects in Tulamben and Amed, Bali to apply WOW’s Sustainable Dynamics framework in promoting social holistic entrepreneurship that is based on community cultural conservation towards regenerative sustainability and wellbeing. This “Ridge to Reef” development hopes to bridge upcountry villages with the needs of coastal village to preserve the local lifestyle that has offered us all abundances from our reefs.

WOW Bali, as a top international initiative in Southeast Asia specializing in the areas of regenerative sustainable human development, wellness, and creative learning for youth, sees the problem with money-driven tourism development. After the past six years of research and case studying tourism as an affective means to sustainable development, find that these type of development tends to use up the natural resources very fast, have environmentally destructive practices, and leave very little control for the local people to their resources and local culture. Not to mention the brain dump of local youths herded into the tourism and hospitality industry.

Instead of being holistic entrepreneurs with more control of their destiny, resources—land, facilities and business— freedom and creativity to preserve their culture and environment, the locals’ participation is limited to being workers of big establishments as their highest end game. A holistic regenerative sustainable approach to community development, on the other hand, emphasizes on the balance of human with other humans, human with nature and human with spirituality and does so in collaboration with different stakeholders to sustain themselves and easily regenerate their efforts.

Based on local wisdom, our intentions are to inspire to the locals in building a self-sustaining community through WOW’s Sustainable Dynamics Collective model, which brings together businesses, academia, government, NGOs and the communities, and base their efforts on human-centeredness—defining the needs of the people and their resources—as an approach to profit-sharing. Through leveraging on each other’s resources in collaboration, the locals can create opportunities for themselves and have the optimum involvement in deciding the direction of the development of their communities and their environment.

Our Adventure Learning Tour program is also built based on the Sustainable Dynamics framework (see graphic below) wherein volunteers are taught WOW’s wellness framework to then apply it as they visit local communities projects. The hands-on experience is meant to build deep understanding of the local history, culture, and way of life as well as give them the opportunity to contribute according to the best of

their abilities. Unlike many other volunteer programs that keep their struggling program to make money for themselves by charging volunteers a huge fee, WOW Bali’s volunteer program is done through what we call “living like a local” and “PLUS One” cost structure to keep costs low for volunteers while making a rich volunteer experience for them and the locals. “Living like a local” means the volunteers will be paying only for what they spend at local prices while most other costs are covered through the mutualism of sharing with the partners at the volunteer site. The “PLUS One” means they will donate minimally the cost of their visits (room, board and travels cost) to the cause we are working on in Tulamben and Amed. The goal is for the UnCollege volunteers to leave our program with WOW’s regenerative social holistic entrepreneurship dynamics and hope of leaving zero trace on their visit.

Our initial partners in Tulamben and Amed will be local NGOs; currently working on the preservation of the reef. Coral Reef Alliance, Reef Check and Conservation International will share with the young social holistic entrepreneurs in training their current processes for adaptions of content and processes into active learning modules that could be used for the village promotions of services to inspire real voluntourism in preservation of the local culture and the enhancement of the current environment.

WOW BALI NOVEMBER 8TH, 2015Prepared by Ms. Sienara ArsyadWOW Bali Director

“Dynamics means the “forces and properties” which is characterized by being adaptive to a constant change, activity or progress AND defined in a person as positive in attitude and full of energy and new ideas; relating to producing motion, expressing an action, activity, event and/or processes. This understanding of dynamics will contribute to a greater understanding of “regenerative” sustainability and wellbeing, which is the backbone of WOW “Sustainable Dynamics” Initiative.” – Hai Dai, WOW Bali Co-Founder and Creative Director