Vern Cork was a co-founder of IVP-AU (International Volunteers for Peace – Australia). Vern was an author, translator, librarian, teacher and fount of knowledge on Balinese history, religion, art and culture. In his last years he lived in Bali, in a beautiful though neglected resort that was set up in the old style of a Balinese compound. Here Vern discovered a collection of several thousand books that were in a state of neglect. Vern’s last wish was for a workcamp to clean the books as a step to conserving them and collate into a library that could be used by the local community.

In July, Rita Warleigh visited Vern to see what could be done. She contacted Sany Mardlotillah from IVP-ID (International Volunteers for Peace – Indonesia) and together they laid the groundwork to bring this project to reality. Time was short as Vern’s health was deteriorating. We chose September hoping that Vern would still be there to pass on his love of books. Unfortunately, Vern passed away on 1st August.

Volunteers cleaning and recording the books

With only six weeks to recruit international volunteers, amazingly, four a applied with Sany as the workcamp leader making five altogether. Work is progressing on the books, and under Sanyu’s leadership, contacts with local schools and universities have been fruitful. It has been a fantastic workcamp and we are pleased we could bring Vern’s last wish to fruition. We are hoping to find a way to continue the project.

Volunteers cleaning old books at the Library is our main work. Taken by Sany

Sany is a great workcamp leader and is so creative in his attempts to reach out to the community. The volunteers have visited local schools where they have presented their cultures, read books to the children, talked up further collaboration. There have been visits to a local waterfall, Indonesian lessons, and other cultural immersions in between work sessions to clean and record the books and place them in categories in new shelves bought for the purpose.

We believe this is the beginning of further great cooperation between IVP-AU and IVP-ID and the seeds of several new projects have already been sown.

Volunteer members, from the left Marco from Italy, Bel from Australia (AustralianTaiwanese), Sharon from Australia, Tinkara from Slovenia, & Sany from Indonesia.