Green School Director Ron Stones with Grace De Niro. Mrs De Niro was so impressed by Green School that she and husband, Actor Robert De Niro, decided to make a significant contribution to out Scholarship Program.
After visiting Green School in August, actor Robert De Niro’s wife Grace was so inspired by what Green School aims to achieve for its Balinese scholars that the family have made a significant donation to our scholarship fund. The family name is now proudly engraved on one of the bamboo poles in Heart of School. The De Niro family joins the growing ranks of people that support our scholarship fund and our mission, demonstrating their commitment to environmental sustainability and the movement to focus locally, in order to help create change on a global scale.
Green School’s scholarship program for Balinese and Indonesian children aims to achieve a 20% ratio of Indonesian/Balinese to International students. The figure is so substantial because it aims to foster one of the school’s primary values – the importance of doing things locally. Green School enables Bali’s brightest, most creative and most engaged students to receive a world-class education for a minimal cost.
Green School aims to support these students through their time at the school and out into the wider world: giving them a first class international education that will see these Indonesian kids win places at the world’s leading universities in the hope that they will bring this knowledge back to Bali and Indonesia, share it with their local communities.
Green School wants to help these students make Bali sustainable. In the words of John Hardy, “Bali is a jewel. It is only 60 x 90 miles in diameter and we have to help educate people in order to help save it. This school has an effect, it is a seed. If we can increase our scholarship program, get more Balinese and Indonesian kids through Green School, if we can find more sponsors who are willing to give $5000 per year to support one child through their entire school career, we will be making a significant step towards helping the Balinese and Indonesian people save their own patch of the planet.”
One such student is Alicia Nur Annisa of Class 9. Alicia, now in her second year at Green School, explains how her whole worldview has changed since she started at the school.
I used to go to a Muslim school in Denpasar. I was never interested in what I was learning because it was just theory, theory, theory! We used to just sit there, listening, reading and writing. I hated it!
When I was at my old school it was like I just lived in my own world, I always wanted to do things on my own, by myself. Now I discuss everything that we learn and do with my family and friends, I tell them everything.
By studying subjects like Green Studies, by being in nature and the environment all the time, everything feels so fresh, so new. I have relationships with so many different people now, my eyes have been opened to what really happens in the world. Green School has changed my life!
