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History of Kupu-Kupu
The
History of Kupu-Kupu Foundation
It
all started in 1998 while Begonia Lopez was on vacation in Bali,
Indonesia. Not satisfied with just being a tourist, she decided to
do some volunteer work at a local school called Sutha Darma. It was
there that she met three handicapped brothers with a
disability they called “sensitive bones”. They came from a very
poor family and were severely deformed. All of them were in wheelchairs.
Over time a beautiful and strong friendship developed. It was from
this beginning that Begonia's life changed and Kupu-Kupu Foundation
finally emerged.
On
her second trip to Bali, Begonia had a little money that she had raised from some friends in Spain.
On this trip she visited a school for handicapped children in Bangli.
They asked her to buy mattresses for the beds and some school
materials. She also saw the condition of the kitchen at the boarding school
and was appalled at how it only had a dirt floor and no running
water. She talked to the director of
the school about how they could organize to build a new kitchen for the
children.
She also went to a hut in Bangli where there were three handicapped young men sleeping on a single mattress on the floor that was dirty and full of holes. She bought some new mattresses and from that point she visited them often to talk about their lives, needs and problems.
At that time Begonia lived in Edinburgh, Scotland. Upon her return she was completely consumed by what she had seen in Bali and how she was going to help. Feeling that she could be more successful at raising funds in her home country, she decided to move back to Spain in order to try to find sponsors for her new projects in Bali. In order to get funding, she found it necessary to set up a NGO and then apply for funds from different Spanish government agencies.
Kupu-Kupu was organized as a local charity on 18th February 2000 in the Basque Country of Spain and registered with the number AS/A/08432/2000. Shortly afterwards, Begonia was successful at getting funding for her first project, a new kitchen for the handicapped school, from the City Council of Llodio in the province of Alava, Spain.
In June 2000 Begonia made the ultimate commitment and decided to move to Bali and give up her job and her lives in Spain and Scotland. Since then she has been working for the Foundation on a full-time volunteer basis without any pay.
Initially the Foundation was operating without any formal organization in Bali. In 2002, a Yayasan (the Indonesian form of a foundation) named "LSM Kupu-Kupu Bali" was established to encompass the Foundation's Bali operations. Agung Putradhyana, who was the architect who designed and managed the building of the kitchen school for handicapped located in Bangli, is the Chairman of the Board. Other board members include Bapak Petrus, Ketut and Wayan.
Mission Statement
Kupu-Kupu Foundation works to improve the lives of physically and mentally disabled children, adolescents and adults in Bali, Indonesia.
We fulfill our mission statement by:
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Assisting with medical care by providing medicines, physiotherapy and surgical operations
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Providing wheelchairs and other physical aids.
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Adapting facilities to make them more handicapped friendly.
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Increasing the awareness of the local community about the problems of the handicapped.
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Getting handicapped children in school by providing the necessary support that they need.
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Helping the handicapped to become more independent through job training and support. This primary is done through selling and promoting handicrafts that they make.