This fun and inspiring story comes from our tree-planting community in Bali, Indonesia.

In case you missed it, the Global Tree Initiative (GTI) is funding a Tiny Forest project, happening at a school in the Kelusa district of Bali, Indonesia. The project is happening over three phases, including land preparation and cleaning, fencing, and planting. The land preparation and fencing are nearly done, and the planting phase will kick off soon!

In the previous story, we explained that the school grounds had a huge garbage dump where plastic would simply be dumped and burnt, and the wish is to transform this into a clean, healthy space and a Tiny Forest. The images below sum up the situation:

While busy with the cleaning and land preparation processes, we were told that cleaning the land took much more work than they had anticipated. The more they dug, the more plastic they found beneath the ground. It seemed like the Tiny Forest is removing generations of plastic from the earth, and they spent more than one month digging and cleaning the soil!

Chelsea Detari, the Associate Director / Education Team Leader at SEE Learning Indonesia, tells us about their recent celebrations:

New Year, New Beginnings

Bali celebrates two distinct New Year’s. The first is the international New Year on January 1st, which is familiar to most of the world. The second is Nyepi, the Balinese New Year, which is observed in a completely different way. Instead of celebration, the entire island enters into stillness. For 24 hours, there is no travel, no work, no lights, and no entertainment. No planes can fly over the island. It is a day dedicated to reflection, introspection, and spiritual reset for nature and our minds.

The evening before Nyepi, however, is the complete opposite! This is when the Ogoh-Ogoh appear. It was so wonderful this year to see the children with their own Ogoh-Ogoh.

Ogoh-Ogoh are large, handmade statues created by local communities, often in the form of demons or mythological beings. They are designed to represent negative energies, things like fear, anger, greed, or chaos. Each figure is carefully crafted, sometimes over weeks, using bamboo and paper, and reflects both creativity and cultural storytelling.

On the night before Nyepi, these statues are carried through the streets in lively parades filled with music, fire, and dancing. The energy is intentionally loud and chaotic! The purpose is symbolic: to bring all negative forces out into the open. At the end of the night, the Ogoh-Ogoh are typically destroyed.

Ogoh-Ogoh carried through the streets in lively parades filled with music, fire, and dancing.

This act represents the destruction or release of negativity, clearing the way for a new beginning. And then, the next day…

Silence.

Nyepi follows as a stark contrast, a full day of stillness after the symbolic cleansing. Together, the Ogoh-Ogoh ritual and Nyepi create a powerful cycle: acknowledge what is heavy, release it, and then begin again from a place of quiet awareness. In this way, Bali’s New Year takes extensive preparation.

Here is one Ogoh-Ogoh from this year, which is so relevant to the work we are doing with Tiny Forest. The Ogoh-Ogoh is spitting out plastic! When we saw this, we were really moved to see that the Balinese people see the waste issue as something destructive enough that they would create an Ogoh-Ogoh from it:

An Ogoh-Ogoh spitting out plastic!

We have spent the past month literally digging plastic from the earth. It has become so visible to us that this Tiny Forest project is removing generations of plastic from the earth, and we feel hopeful that we can nurture this Tiny Forest for future generations.

The garbage heap is gone, and we are ready to plant this month. It’s truly shocking for us all, including the staff and children at the school, how much plastic was beneath the ground!

Have a look at the three photos below to see the incredible progress:

Chelsea, this is an incredible story! We are so touched to see that the community created an Ogoh-Ogoh spitting out plastic. It is beautiful to see that your work with the Tiny Forest is having a positive impact on the community, and that they are acknowledging the waste and plastic cleanup, making it their ‘own’.

Thank you for this wonderful story and for the cleanup that you and your team are doing. We are very inspired, and we look forward to the planning phase.

We wish our community in Bali a happy new year, and thank you for partnering with us.

More news will follow soon – keep an eye out for our newsletter and posts on social media!

In the video below, some school kids are seen with their Ogoh-Ogoh: