We see so many terrible things on television news programs and films that most of us become deadened to feeling the suffering and pain of our fellow man. We detach ourselves from what we see, so as to protect ourselves from suffering the pain we would feel. Other factors also contribute, and the resulting effect on us is to eventually shut down that part of us that is able to feel entirely. We lose the ability to unconditionally love and care for others, and for ourselves. We focus on filling our waking hours with work and entertainment, bombarding our senses with distractions, rather than to face the true situation of the world we live in and our place in it.

This Business Plan is about opening our hearts and minds to the extreme suffering so many people endure every day, and to provide relief from that suffering wherever possible.

The Foundation will build and operate a Relief Complex in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia.

The main building at the complex will be an orphanage providing a home for 100 homeless children.

Additional buildings will act as support to the orphanage's activities, including a school and work training facilities, and widen the target of support to distressed women and neglected elderly people.

The Foundation will be active in the community, providing counselling and support at a grassroots level, while working with government departments and charitable organisations to improve the level of legal and social support for human rights, humanitarian and social issues.

The Foundation's Residential Complex will not just be a ‘bed for the night', but a place that helps to develop and empower members with the aim of setting them up with a strong foundation for the best chance in life possible. Helping them to help themselves and become free-thinkers, by offering unbiased education so they can make their own choices leading to a more fulfilling and worthwhile life.

The Foundation believes that many problems in the world, such as religious intolerance, racism, destruction of the environment etc., are a basic result of human fear and ignorance.

Through a broad education and direct interaction between people of different nations, one would hope that humanity can grow to become more open-minded and compassionate, and less prejudiced and self-centered.

The current plans already represent a significantly sized project which will take a number of years to establish.

However once the Organisation is set up and running, it will form the blueprint for establishing similar projects in other cities and countries.

As we learn and develop together, it is expected that we will make mistakes along the way. What is important is that we learn from those experiences and incorporate what we have learned into providing a continually improving service and blueprint for the future.

Two legal entities will be established.
The first, in Indonesia, will focus on the provision of charitable activities.
The second, in the UK, will focus on fundraising.

Gunungan is the Indonesian name for the leather puppet representation of the Universal Mountain incorporating the Tree of Life. Yayasan means ‘Foundation'.

Yayasan Gunungan will be responsible for the provision of charitable activities within Indonesia.

The Tree of Life Foundation will be set up in the UK as a charitable non-profit company limited by guarantee.

The main object of the foundation will be to raise funds for charitable operations that alleviate suffering in Asia and around the World.

The foundation will also be used to provide opportunities for underprivileged people to live and work in a western society to experience the culture and way of life. In this way it is hoped that people can achieve a more global view on life, appreciating the positive and negative factors of other cultures.

The first activity at the complex will be to build and operate the new orphanage. The building will have two stories and be built in a U shape configuration around an open courtyard.

The upper level will be entirely residential, with girls on one side and boys on the other. Younger children will sleep in dormitories of 10 children per room while older children and young people will be accommodated in smaller rooms with 4 people per room. The upper story will also provide a living room, washrooms, toilets, and single rooms for live-in helpers.

The ground floor will provide the activity rooms. These include the crèche & nursery, kitchen, dining room, study room, computer room, living room, office and first-aid room.

The Foundation's policy is to help all those children and young people who are in need, regardless of religion, nationality, race, class, age and circumstances. However ‘need' will be assessed on a case by case basis. Where it is possible to re-integrate young people back into society or re-unite children with their families, this will always be the preferred option. For those members who live at the house, it will aim to provide an encouraging, loving, happy and stable environment while instilling a good understanding of right and wrong, and an appreciation of the needs of others through close communal interaction.

Children will initially attend local village schools, although they will receive extra lessons in English from volunteer English language teachers invited from abroad. The English language is widely used internationally and by studying it members will have many more choices and opportunities available to them for their life after leaving the Foundation.

The Foundation will develop a website which will include an on-line chat area where children will have the opportunity to communicate with other children from around the world. Here they will be able to practice their language skills, learn and develop their understanding about other cultures and have fun.

In conjunction with this, exchange programs will be established with other groups around the world, giving children the opportunity to visit and experience first hand other cultures and ways of life.

Other opportunities offered to older members will include personal development activities, vocational training, and for some, employment.

The complex will be built on the outskirts of Solo City, a city rumoured to be the central hub for the buying and selling of children and young women for Indonesia's sex industry. Young women, many under the age of 18, endure terrible hardship, held captive inside filthy brothels, servicing a number of men every day. They are rarely allowed out and are often forced into becoming drug addicts by their captives. The brothel owners usually keep the money that the women earn and provide them with just enough food and drugs to keep them operational.

Many young women and children have been sold into the business by their own parents who could no longer afford to support them. Unscrupulous orphanage owners also sell children under their protection into the sex industry. Many children orphaned in Aceh by the tsunami were collected and sold off. Most going from one day, enjoying a happy life with their family and friends, to the next day alone, beaten and sexually abused in some far away city or country. At one legitimate orphanage visited, among some 30 children from Central Java, there was a young girl who had been saved from Aceh. When the manager of the orphanage was asked why there was only one from Aceh, the answer was that one was all they could afford to buy.

The second house to be constructed at the complex will be a sanctuary for young women who have managed to break away from a life of prostitution, or are distraught in some other terrible way. The Foundation will also actively search out prostitutes, and provide counselling, health checks and safe sex education. The distressed women's house will primarily function as a transit house, where members can release some of the pain they have suffered in a safe environment and receive proper counselling, education, work training and possibly employment within the complex.

Once the houses are established, a school will then be constructed. Students will not only learn the traditional subjects they would learn in a local school, but also receive a higher standard of education in the English language, a broader world view on subjects such as history and religion, and an additional focus on the natural world and the world we live in.

With regard to religion, the school will provide a bias-free and complete education in the main world religions as well as a variety of traditional faiths. Members will receive the proper foundations to decide the way which is best for themselves, while learning to respect the beliefs of others.

The school will provide the children and young people with a solid educational foundation, from where many more opportunities will be available to them than would otherwise have been possible. Volunteer teachers will be invited from abroad to provide assistance and additional material. The use of volunteer teachers will not only provide an excellent additional resource for the school but also provide the volunteers with a wonderful opportunity to experience the Asian culture first hand.

Many street children and sex workers have very limited schooling and even less vocational training. The first barrier to cross is teaching the value of working, of creating something to be proud of and receiving direct remuneration for this work, rather than begging or submitting to physical and emotional abuse for money. By offering a variety of in-house vocational training programs and funding attendance at established external vocational training centers, members will not only be taught a useful trade to sustain themselves in the future but they will also develop self-respect and confidence as a direct result.

Prior to starting a program, members will be evaluated as to where their passion and abilities lie. Priority will be given to matching a member's area of passion and ability with specific programs, thereby providing them with the best chance of enjoyment and success.

A Small Farm and Orchard will be created where members of the foundation will look after a number of livestock and grow fruits, herbs and vegetables.

Importantly, by working to help nurture animals and plants, it is hoped that members will develop increased self-respect and respect for the environment, also a greater feeling of self-worth and confidence. All these are qualities often lost from a life on the streets or in prostitution. By having these qualities re-installed, members should be much better equipped to live a fulfilling life in society.

The farm will also provide a supply of natural organic foods for the Complex. Members will be encouraged to appreciate and become aware of the effect that food has on their bodies and grow to be more healthy individuals with a better quality of life as a result. Members involved with the farm and cooking at the Complex will study food nutrition and traditional herbal remedies to help provide everyone with the solid basis for a healthy body and mind.

“I was sitting one day at a local restaurant in the city, when the friend I was with pointed out an old lady collapsed by the side of the road. She was totally naked except for an old blanket someone had tried to put over her and a dirty plastic bag tied around an infected foot half destroyed by gangrene. It was mid-afternoon and the local people told us that she had been there since the day before. She could hardly move and was obviously extremely sick. Straight away we arranged for her to be taken to a local hospital and cared for. Sadly, however, 3 days later we heard that she had passed away.” (Solo, Indonesia, Aug 2005).

The culture in Indonesia is very much to respect senior members of the family and society, and many are well cared for by their families. However there are also many who become too great a financial and emotional burden on their relatives. Senior citizen homes do exist, but they are few and terribly under-funded. It is not uncommon to see a man or woman well into their 70's or 80's begging at traffic lights alongside the street children, struggling, with no dignity left, to collect enough money for a bowl of boiled rice.

A home for neglected and abandoned senior citizens will be built at the complex. The home will be set within an attractive location and staffed with trained helpers to provide the best possible care and activities, so that the neglected elderly can enjoy their remaining years with dignity and self-respect.

A mobile unit will be created to visit and provide aid to prostitutes, street children, neglected senior citizens and destitute families. Trained counsellors and helpers will provide aid where needed.

A helpline shall also be advertised for people to call for assistance, which the mobile unit will respond to.

Trained counsellors will visit prostitutes and street children to listen to their problems and provide advice and assistance as required.

Assistance will be provided to help gain access to government services, such as healthcare, free schooling, birth certificates and identity cards.

Advice will be provided on the risks of unsafe sex and also the value of education.

Work training and some employment will be offered from the Residential Complex.

It has been estimated that there are around 50,000 street children in Indonesia.

In many instances street children have run away from home to search for a better life. They may have been beaten or sexually abused by their relatives or there may simply not have been enough food to go around. Some are lured away from home by friends with talk of great opportunity. Whatever the reason for leaving, what these children usually find is a life spent either begging for money on a polluted city street or being forced into a life of prostitution.

Street children are considered to be the lowest class of society. In many cases the main reason that the children do not return home is due to embarrassment. They fear embarrassment in front of their family and the embarrassment they would bring upon their family within society.

Trained counsellors will visit the street children and strive to find their families. Then, working with both parties as an intermediary, establish communication between the two and, where possible, find a means to reunification.

After reunification, regular visits will continue to ensure the child is living in a satisfactory and safe family environment.

The Foundation guarantees that all funds donated are used to support authorized projects or activities, at grassroots level, as detailed in this Business Plan.

Three funding methods will be open to donors, an unrestricted fund, a restricted fund and a Child sponsorship fund.

A sponsorship program will be established where Donors can become Sponsors of one or more children at the Foundation.

To become a Sponsor requires a commitment. Sponsors are asked to provide, as a minimum, for the basic living, clothing and schooling costs of the child up until the age of 16. Any additional contributions will be held on trust for the child until they reach the age of 16 and in accordance with any special requests from the Sponsor.

It will not be possible for Sponsors to select the child that they wish to sponsor. Children will become available for sponsorship in the order that they joined the Foundation. This is to ensure that the children are treated as fairly as possible.  

The Foundation will maintain separate and proper books of account for each of the activities undertaken, in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

Each of the Operational Units shall be required to prepare and submit monthly financial reports to Head Office, who will undertake constant review and control of income and expenditure at the operation units.

The accounts preparation and reporting structure will be as follows :