Visit to Mt Agung Evacuee Camp

Last month, our intern Kristina Post visited three different evacuee camps in Bali as part of an observation into the work of Social Impakt.

Social Impakt is the brainchild of Jeroen van Overbeek, and provides water filters as an alternative to bottled water. The filters can be filled with well, tap or rain water, which then runs through a ceramic filter containing pores smaller than 0.4 microns. This stops micro-organisms like bacteria, cysts, parasites etc entering the filter. The filter also contains activated carbon and colloidal silver which kills pesticides and fungi.

Jeroen plays an active role in these camps, and with his Bahasa Indonesia skills, explains to the residents how to use and clean the filters. But his and Kristina’s visit wasn’t only about the water filters, it was also about making a connection with the people living there, hearing their stories and playing with the children.

The camps that Kristina visited were different sizes, from small ones with only 20 residents, to medium ones with 160 residents, to large ones with 300 people. Between September 2017 and October 2017, Jeroen donated 600 filters in total. This came down to 50 filters a day, three times a week.

When Mt. Agung first started erupting, there were approximately 450 evacuee camps in Bali. Now there are 222.

With the work of My Red Envelope teaming up with Bali Ginger Suites & Villa and their guests (with special thanks to Tricia Jensen & Ross McCallum), we were able to donate eight water filters to different evacuation camps in the Sidemen and Klungkung area.