What is Dharma School Bali?
Dharma School Bali is a nonprofit elementary and middle (grades 1-9; SD/ SMP) school founded by long-term, experienced local and international community educators who are passionate about individuals, families and communities working together to protect the earth. We are educators who believe that community-based, nature-centred, experiential education is the key to creating a just and sustainable future. We believe each human being has a responsibility to every other living being, and it is through understanding our impact - and ensuring that this impact is positive - that we will make change.
Dharma School Bali is not only a sustainability-focused school, but an integrated way of being. Our school is situated in nature in Desa Bukit, Karangasem, where we learn through being immersed in and working with our community. Students and families support local communities by living with them and participating in family and local events and activities. We live in ways that are inherently considerate and mutually supportive. And we join traditional ceremonies as a way of understanding the gratitude and selflessness that create the gentleness that is Bali.
Dharma School Bali is based in current research that concludes that climate change is man-made and driven by efficiency-based technologies and acquisitive perspectives that eliminate nature and take for granted ways of living in and with nature that are inherently sustainable. Therefore, at Dharma School Bali, we learn ways of being that connect us with nature and enable us to thrive while also enabling nature to thrive. We learn traditional skills from Bali and link these to proven and sustainable technologies from ancient communities around the world that continue to connect humans to the past while protecting the future.
Our approach to education