The Bali Life Street Kids Centre, Denpasar. Photographs courtesy of Marisha Shanti Kelly and the Bali Life Foundation.
A child born in Indonesia without a birth certificate can be turned away from a school gate and a hospital door.
Not because anyone decided that child should go without. Because, in the eyes of the state, that child does not exist. This is the quiet machinery of inherited poverty, and it is the reason ART AID chose to work with the Bali Life Foundation.
Why the cycle holds
Bali is not, for everyone, the island the tourism brochures sell. Behind an economy built on millions of annual visitors sits a population in which large numbers live below the poverty line, and in which rural villages can carry poverty rates above a third. When farm incomes collapse and work is scarce, families migrate toward the tourist centres, and some children end up on the streets of Denpasar and Kuta, sent to beg, sometimes for ten or twelve hours a day, instead of sitting in a classroom.
But poverty alone does not fully explain why the cycle is so hard to break. The deeper mechanism is documentation. A birth certificate is a child's first legal recognition by the state, and without it the doors to public education, healthcare and social protection can simply stay shut.
~24 million Indonesian children
are estimated to have no birth certificate, leaving them, in the words of researchers, effectively invisible to the state and at heightened risk of dropping out of school, child labour and trafficking.
The disadvantage compounds. National survey analysis has found that among children unable to show a birth certificate, the large majority come from the poorest households. And in those poorest households, children who do hold a birth certificate are roughly three times more likely to complete twelve years of education than those who do not. A single missing document quietly determines whether a child can be schooled at all.
That is the trap. A child born outside the system is denied the very services, education above all, that would let them escape it. Without intervention, the cycle simply repeats into the next generation.
A boy in Suwung, Bali. Some 200 families live here, a twenty-minute drive from Kuta Beach.
Why we chose this partnership
In 2023, ART AID set itself a challenge. Could we use art and creativity to raise enough money to make a meaningful, lasting difference to the lives of children and families who needed it most?
We chose to work with the Bali Life Foundation, a not-for-profit based in Denpasar dedicated to breaking exactly this cycle, because their model addresses the mechanism, not only the symptom. They do not simply feed a child for a day. They work to move a child off the street, into structured learning, and to give that child's mother a means of earning so the family is not driven back to begging. That is intervention aimed at the root, which is the only kind that lasts.
Working in partnership with Bali Life, ART AID spent just over a year raising funds across Australia. The goal was to help build a Street Kids Centre and Women's Workshop in Denpasar, a safe place for vulnerable children to learn, play and grow, and a place for their mothers to earn a wage through skilled craft work. Through art sales and donations across exhibitions and pop-up events, the Australian creative community rallied behind the cause. By the end of 2023, we had raised enough to make it happen.
What the Centre provides
The Bali Life Street Kids Centre is built around two programs that work together by design.
The informal school welcomes children Monday to Friday. It provides breakfast and lunch, two classrooms, a library, a play area, and the daily structure and care that give a child a genuine alternative to the street. For many of these children, it is the first time they have had a routine that belongs to childhood rather than survival.
Alongside it, the Women's Workshop gives the children's mothers the opportunity to make handicrafts and jewellery sold internationally. The logic is deliberate and it is the heart of why this works:
“Every day a woman earns a wage is a day her children do not need to beg. It is as simple, and as powerful, as that.”
The Women's Workshop, where mothers earn a wage through skilled craft work.
The launch
When the Centre was ready, I flew to Bali to attend the official launch alongside the Bali Life Foundation team. To stand in that space, knowing the Australian creative community had helped bring it to life, was one of the proudest moments in ART AID's history. But the pride belongs less to us than to the model: a building is only the beginning, what matters is the cycle it interrupts.
The Bali Life Foundation Director thanks ART AID and its supporters at the Centre opening.
With thanks
None of this would have been possible without the generosity of the artists, creatives, collectors and supporters who got behind the fundraising effort. Every artwork sold, every event attended and every dollar donated went directly toward something that will serve children and families in Bali for generations.
With heartfelt thanks to the creatives who collaborated with us: Bodega Collective, Caleb Jackson, CJ The Kid, David Bromley, Eddie Zammit, Georgia Hill, Jeremy Kay and Planet Rami.
And to our partners, Mirvac, Glenfiddich, Fever-Tree and Placemaking NSW, thank you for your belief in the power of art to raise funds, build community and change lives.
Looking ahead
Our relationship with the Bali Life Foundation is one we are deeply proud of, and one we intend to continue. We would welcome the chance to work with them again, raising funds for the next chapter of their vision to educate and empower children and families across Bali.
A missing document should never decide whether a child gets to be a child. Art cannot rewrite that law, but it can help build the place that works around it.
To learn more about the Bali Life Foundation or support their work directly, visit balilife.org. ART AID is a purpose-driven consultancy working at the intersection of art, community and place. Find out more at art-aid.co or follow @artaidau.
