1800 346 288
For more than 35 years, Gede Bingen has been part of the John Fawcett Foundation, witnessing its growth from a single second-hand school bus into an organisation restoring sight across Indonesia.
We visited Gede to talk about those early days, the people and stories that have stayed with him, and what giving someone their sight back can mean far beyond simply being able to see.
Starting off with the big question… what’s your go-to coffee order?
Well, a black coffee in the morning. And I won’t say no to a latte when I have the chance, of course.
For anyone meeting you for the first time, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about your role with the John Fawcett Foundation?
Well, my name is Gede Bingin. I’m the Executive Manager of Yayasan John Fawcett Indonesia, as well as the Chairman of the Yayasan. My role is sort of like being a bridge between the JFF Board in Australia and the staff in Indonesia, as well as managing the day-to-day work and making sure everyone does their work, of course.
Yes, that’s my role in Indonesia. Some of the day-to-day work is actually being a bridge between Indonesia, Australia and the UK.
For those who haven’t heard of the Foundation before, can you tell us a little about JFF and the work you do in Indonesia?
Yes. The John Fawcett Foundation is a humanitarian foundation, a non-profit organisation. We focus on sight restoration and blindness prevention in Indonesia.
We work closely with the Indonesian Government and with people in Indonesia who are blind and unable to access these services. We bring the services to the people in Indonesia who need them, not just in Bali, but also across the islands of Indonesia.
As you know, Indonesia has over 17,000 islands. So bringing the service closer to communities is very important. And all of our services are provided free of charge.
The first mobile eye clinic was a second-hand school bus fitted out here in Perth. How has JFF grown and evolved since those early days?
It's come a long way.
It started with a second-hand school bus from Perth in the early 1990s. Since then, we’ve grown to have a number of mobile eye clinics, which enable us to bring these services to people across Indonesia. It’s also no longer just about the mobile eye clinics. We work closely with local hospitals and ophthalmic surgeons, and wherever possible we’re able to use more advanced cataract surgery techniques.
We’ve also introduced electronic medical records to help us manage patient information, and we’re involved in knowledge sharing between Australia and Indonesia. Young doctors and surgeons from Australia can learn about the work we do here, while young surgeons from Bali also have opportunities to travel to Australia and learn.
So we’ve grown from that original second-hand school bus to now having four mobile units, as well as working closely with local hospitals. This allows us to perform more cataract surgeries across Indonesia.
I’ve been with JFF since 1991, so more than 35 years now. I’ve known John for that long too. I was very young when I started, so I’ve witnessed everything from those very early days in the 1990s.
Can you take us through what a typical day looks like when one of the mobile eye clinics arrives in a community?
We start very early in the morning. We bring the mobile eye clinic into the centre of a village and travel from village to village.
We begin with eye screenings for the community. We provide glasses to people who need them and eye drops to treat minor infections. Most importantly, we identify patients with cataracts. When we bring the mobile eye clinic to a village, we can screen patients and perform cataract surgery on the same day.
We’ll generally be in the village until late afternoon. If it’s somewhere close to our headquarters, perhaps a two-hour drive away, the team can return home. But sometimes when it's very distant, if we’re travelling to a remote village, the team will stay overnight because we need to see the cataract patients again the following day. We check that they’re recovering well after their surgery.
In a typical day, we might screen around 200 to 300 people.When there’s time, we also visit primary schools and screen the children. It’s not only about checking their eyes, but also awareness and educating them about eye health and how to protect their eyesight. They can then take that information home and share it with their families.
For many patients, something as relatively straightforward as cataract surgery can completely change their lives. What does restoring someone’s sight mean beyond being able to see again?
It's life changing for someone to have a sight return actually because it doesn’t only help the patient. It helps their family too. There’s a ripple effect.
When you give sight back to one person, you can also free up another member of the family who may have spent their life caring for that person. Some of our patients are still young and able to work, so restoring their sight means they can return to work. For others, it might mean being able to see their grandchildren again or help look after them.
It's something that’s really rewarding to you, you know, giving sight back to someone so they are able to return to the normal activities, normal life and especially the family. The patient can be free, they can do whatever they want to do and then the families are also able to do to their own things.
Is there a particular person, story or moment from your work with JFF that has stayed with you?
Yeah, it's been a long time, there have been many over more than 30 years. I remember a girl, her name is Shilu, back in the early 1990s, she's about, approximately about 12 or 13 years old, both of her eyes cataract and never had been schooled before and because of the blindness.
She had the responsibility of looking after the brother and sister because she wasn’t in school. We operated on both of her eyes, but we didn’t stop there. Because she had missed so much schooling, we paid for a tutor to teach her how to read and write. A few years later, her family decided to move from Bali to Sulawesi which is about, one and a half, two hours flight from here. Then a 8 to 10 hour drive from the airpot to the village.
Because she had learnt to read and write, we didn’t lose touch with her. She was able to write us a letter and tell us about her life there. We were very happy to receive it and wrote back to her. The latest we heard was that she had grown up, had her own family and had children of her own.
That’s the kind of story that stays with you. It was more than 30 years ago, but I still remember it.
When you talk about restoring someone’s sight, you’re talking about giving someone the opportunity to live their life to its full capacity. Giving someone access to a new life, a new chance and new hope is incredibly rewarding.
We’re very proud of what we do
What’s a typical recation when you remove the eye patches on patients?
You see many different reactions from patients.
Some people have been blind for so many years that their brain has to adjust to seeing things again, from lines and shapes to the colours around them. Some people immediately react with, “Oh, thank God.” Others are very calm and are simply trying to adjust to what they can suddenly see.
But when you see someone receive their sight back, there’s a smile. Not just on their face, but a smile in their eyes.
There are so many different reactions, and we love seeing them.
