Newsletter for the Rotary Club of Western Endeavour - Issue No.: 1117 Issue Date: 28 Apr, 2024

We enjoyed a great presentation this week by Dean Bowker, a member of the Board for the John Fawcett Foundation, a humanitarian, not for profit organisation that assists needy people in Indonesia, particularly in the field of sight restoration and blindness prevention.  As many of you know, Bali is one of my favourite holiday destinations and is wonderful to find such a worthwhile project to contribute to in recognition of the amazing times I have spent there and will continue to spend there.

The founder, John Fawcett has been living in Bali since 1983, after relocating there to recover from a life-threatening medical accident in 1981, which kept him hospitalised for nearly three years. Prior to this, John was a ceramacist, educationalist and Deputy Director of the Perth Technical College.  I was a student at the college when John was there and remember catering for a function at his home in Araluen along with 3 other catering students.  When John decided to live permanently in Bali he was asked by the Governor to consider not just taking from the local community, but giving to them.

John quickly recognized the great medical need on the island and, with assistance from Rotary Australia and Rotary International, began the humanitarian work which subsequently took over his life, first establishing a Cleft Lip and Palate Program in 1989.  In 1991 the Rotary Club of West Perth used a Rotary Foundation Grant to set up the Bali Eye Clinic. A mobile eye clinic operating theatre van was fitted out in Perth and delivered by Hercules airplane to Bali courtesy of the Royal Australian Air Force. In the next four years, cataract operations were performed to restore sight to over 4000 people. The establishment of The John Fawcett Foundation and its Indonesian counterpart, the Yayasan Kemanusiaan Indonesia in 2000, brought these and other, smaller, projects together under one organisation. 

The foundation now has 5 mobile clinics and have the support of the Indonesian air force to transport the mobile clinics and staff to remote areas of Indonesia which otherwise would not be able to access the treatment.  In the elderly, the perception is that a cataract can mean the end of a usefull life.  By providing an operation that takes 30 minutes and costs only $95AUD, people’s lives can be changed.

I could go on for a lot longer about what amazing work the John Fawcett Foundation does in Indonesia, but instead I give you the link here to their website where you can investigate this amazing organisation in your own time. www.johnfawcett.org