Overview
My Leadership in Action project began with the broad aim of supporting a children’s home in Bali, Indonesia. More specifically, I sought to evaluate existing programmes, identify areas for improvement, and implement sustainable interventions that could continue to be used after my departure. For the most part, this proved achievable, with the impact of several interventions becoming apparent during my final weeks at the foundation and continuing after I had left. However, as is often the case when working within an unfamiliar environment, the process proved considerably more complex than I had initially anticipated. It required me to adapt my expectations, recognise the limitations of my own perspective, and work collaboratively with local staff and other volunteers to develop solutions that were both practical and culturally appropriate.
Evaluating Existing Programmes and Identifying Areas for Improvement
Upon arrival, I was introduced to a volunteer programme that had been established by a previous visitor to the foundation approximately two years earlier. Through this programme, children under the age of two were given the opportunity to participate in small excursions during the morning or afternoon at least twice a week. These excursions involved one-to-one interaction between a child and volunteer, typically consisting of approximately one hour of structured or informal play followed by an hour of outdoor activity in the local area and surrounding fields. The value of these excursions was immediately apparent from the children’s excitement when their names were called to participate.
However, I quickly noticed that, with approximately 20 children eligible to participate, the system for ensuring equitable access to these excursions was poorly coordinated. To address this, we introduced a dual paper-based tracking system through which both local staff and volunteers recorded which children had participated each day. This made it easier to identify children who had not recently had the opportunity to go outside.
The system was not without its limitations. Children would occasionally become unwell or require isolation following surgical or medical treatment, disrupting the expected rotation. This could result in some children being inadvertently overlooked while others participated in excursions almost daily. Nevertheless, improved communication between staff and volunteers, alongside more consistent follow-up, reduced these discrepancies and allowed a more equitable system to develop by the end of my six-week placement.
During these excursions, I also observed how the children interacted with unfamiliar surroundings. Some demonstrated significant fear or apprehension towards everyday aspects of the outdoor environment and appeared to experience difficulties with developmental milestones expected within their age group. Their limited exposure to environments outside the children’s home offered one possible explanation for some of these behaviours; notably, one 18-month-old child experienced the outdoors for the first time during my placement. Objects and experiences that might be familiar to many children—including cars, birds, plants and unfamiliar outdoor sounds—could therefore be novel and, at times, frightening.
In response, we introduced small indoor play stations centred around elements that the children were likely to encounter outside. For example, an animal-themed station used pictures and toys to introduce different animals by name in both Bahasa Indonesia and English. We would subsequently take the children outdoors and, where appropriate, identify the animals or objects that they had encountered during the indoor session, encouraging them to approach and explore their environment safely. Across repeated sessions, we observed increasing confidence among several children. Although the relatively short duration of my placement meant that these anxieties could not be fully addressed, the experience demonstrated how gradual and structured exposure could be incorporated into ordinary play.
Another prominent area for improvement was the limited availability of sensory and exploratory play. Although the home contained numerous donated toys and books, I noticed that the children often gained the greatest enjoyment from simple activities such as playing with water at the sink or digging in the surrounding gardens. Recognising that these forms of play could be recreated in a safer and more controlled environment, a dedicated water and sand play area was purchased and installed.
Initially, this proposal was met with some resistance from local staff, primarily because of concerns about mess and the additional burden of changing the children’s clothes. Rather than implementing the intervention without their support, we discussed these practical concerns and trialled different approaches. Eventually, we established a rota that aligned use of the sand and water area with times when the children would ordinarily be changed. This compromise enabled the activity to be incorporated without substantially increasing staff workload. Its success was particularly visible: the children engaged enthusiastically with the new equipment and frequently spent extended periods playing with it. Importantly, the process also reinforced for me that a theoretically beneficial intervention is unlikely to be sustainable unless it accounts for the practical needs of those responsible for maintaining it.
Supporting Children with Learning and Developmental Difficulties
Interacting individually with the children over the six-week period allowed me to observe considerable variation in their physical, cognitive and behavioural development. Drawing cautiously upon my previous academic and practical experience, I began to question whether some children displayed signs of developmental delay. Some had established diagnoses, including a two-year-old boy with cerebral palsy and associated learning difficulties, while the developmental needs of others were less clearly recognised.
I was conscious, however, that my observations were subjective and that I was neither in a position to diagnose these children nor to assume that developmental expectations from my own educational and cultural background could be applied without qualification. I therefore discussed my observations with other appropriately experienced volunteers, including paediatric nurses, before speaking with local staff. These conversations suggested that staff had also recognised some of these developmental differences, although they were not necessarily reflected in altered approaches to play and learning.
This presented an important challenge: how could we provide more targeted developmental stimulation without imposing an unrealistic system upon staff or volunteers?
The existing one-to-one volunteer programme offered an opportunity. Individual sessions meant activities could be adapted according to each child’s abilities and needs. However, this depended upon volunteers understanding how to structure developmentally appropriate play, something that could not be assumed given the wide range of backgrounds and experience among those visiting the foundation.
To address this, another Laidlaw scholar and I developed accessible activity cards in both Bahasa Indonesia and English. These provided examples of structured play activities targeting different developmental skills and explained simple ways in which volunteers could encourage children towards relevant milestones. Rather than functioning as rigid instructions, the cards were designed as starting points that volunteers could adapt to the interests and abilities of individual children.
To improve sustainability, the cards were incorporated digitally into the welcome materials provided to new volunteers, allowing them to remain accessible after our departure. Their uptake continues to be monitored, and their content can be adapted in response to feedback from staff and future volunteers. This was an important lesson in sustainability: rather than creating an intervention dependent upon my continued presence, the aim was to provide a resource that could evolve alongside the organisation.
Increasing Outdoor Opportunities for the Youngest Children
At the time of my arrival, the foundation had begun trialling the transition of children aged four and above to a newly established children’s home in Klaten. A fellow volunteer and I visited the facility and observed a considerable difference in the environment available to the older children. The Klaten home offered substantially greater outdoor space and a more structured daily routine designed around an educational and family-style environment.
This prompted me to consider the experiences of the youngest children at the Bali home. Six infants, with an average age of approximately six months, were cared for separately from the older group as they had not yet begun walking. These infants had extremely limited opportunities to leave the home, generally doing so only for medical appointments.
Through discussions with staff, I learned that this was not due to a lack of recognition of the potential benefits of outdoor activity, but rather practical and safeguarding concerns. There were insufficient staff members and pushchairs to make regular excursions feasible, while staff were understandably hesitant to allow volunteers to take very young infants outside independently without appropriate training.
Rather than viewing this as resistance to change, I began to recognise it as a logistical problem requiring compromise. Following the purchase of an additional pushchair and discussions with staff, we developed an arrangement whereby one or two staff members could take approximately three infants outside with support from volunteers who were already accompanying children from the under-two group. This allowed responsibility for the infants to remain with experienced staff while volunteers provided the additional practical support required to make the excursions feasible.
The system was implemented only during my final days with the organisation, meaning its long-term impact cannot yet be fully assessed. Nevertheless, its initial implementation was encouraging and created a practical mechanism through which the youngest children could experience the outdoor environment more regularly.
Conclusion
The overall process of enacting these alterations encapsulated one of the central lessons of my Leadership in Action experience. Effective leadership did not mean arriving with predetermined solutions and persuading others to adopt them. Many of the challenges I initially perceived had underlying practical, cultural or safeguarding considerations that were not immediately visible to me as an outsider. Progress depended upon listening to those already working within the organisation, understanding their concerns, and identifying areas in which our respective priorities could align.
Across the six weeks, I therefore came to view leadership increasingly as a process of collaboration, adaptation and compromise. The most successful interventions were not necessarily those that appeared most ambitious, but those that could be integrated realistically into existing routines and maintained after I had left. The experience reinforced the importance of approaching community-based work with humility: identifying opportunities for improvement while recognising that sustainable change is most effective when it is developed with a community rather than simply implemented for it.