Row For R.O.L.E. is an annual fundraising canoe race to uplift marginalized young women from poverty through education and career support. The race participants raise funds for a noble cause and compete in several categories over a 13 km open ocean distance from the picturesque beach of Regency Hyatt in Sanur to the white sands of Grand Hyatt in Nusa Dua. The event sponsors funded attractive prizes for the race Winners and top Fundraisers.
The guests and participants showed outstanding sportsmanship, and fair play, enjoyed the world premiere of the Bali WISE Anthem, and had lots of joy and fun.
In 2023, the ROW FOR R.O.L.E. 2.0 event helped raise over 1.000.000.000 IDR for the Bali WISE program to educate marginalized young Indonesian women!
“I Know the Longer Way” Song © by Karl Gart
A story of one promise…
In not so distant past, Karl, then former director and acting chairman board of trustees of an international philanthropic organization, met Bali WISE Team. He shared with them he once was a European professional classical musician with over 1000 concerts in 20 countries in his account. Later he said jokingly, “I keep promises. Therefore this was a terrible mistake because Bali WISE people made me promise to write a song for their organization!”
Since moving to Southeast Asia, Karl Gart taught children and teenagers, trained adults, established and mentored organizations, and worked and co-operated predominantly with women. He was an international leader of diverse cross-cultural teams in arts, education, organizations, and philanthropy. He noticed recurrent challenges women from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds face, such as rough social expectations and fear of disappointing their families.
Women suffered low self-esteem, decision-making difficulties, and a lack of confidence in their abilities.
Karl finally gained enough experience to overcome intercultural barriers and build professional trust with females from Southeast Asia region to encourage them to openly share their stories. From this point, Karl began learning about the root reasons for the gap between men and women in outcomes, education, self-value, and self-confidence.
Women’s culturally and socially conditioned inability to express their feelings and opinions and defend themselves in certain situations was the hardest of all issues; it was harmful to teams and businesses, just to mention women’s private lives.
As a communication specialist with an artistic and executive background, Karl worked and co-operated with women from all social backgrounds, from those of rural areas to students, young educated professionals, female professors, directors, CEOs, entrepreneurs, diplomats, politicians, prominent women from ruling and royal families.
This learning process displayed a diametrical difference between the placid surface of many Asian cultures and the women’s deprivation of fundamental rights and freedoms, which remains inaccessible and invisible to individuals of no familiarity with the culture and no understanding of its depths and social expectations. These facts are hardly talked about in social media and tourist guides. Yet, they often determine the stability and well-being of individuals, groups, organizations, and companies.
Karl used every opportunity to learn about women’s social situation for a few years. It showed that discrimination is tremendously unfavorable for women and men, their offspring, society, businesses, and general well-being. Listening to stories of Bali WISE students and many other marginalized women from Asia, Karl thought about how to write a song telling their rough and often sad lives in a way that brings hope, will to change, and power to act.
A survey among many Asian women showed that despite social status, family education level, and economic condition, Asian women consider it much more challenging to achieve the same goals than their male counterparts due to social conditioning and false belief in women’s inability to match men; Karl wrote “I Know the Longer Way” song, and…
That’s why every “you can’t” women hear from their families and societies in real life has been turned into “I can!” in the song. The lyrics were finished with a touch of melody, harmony, and rhythm.
Who is Bali WISE (R.O.L.E. Foundation)?
- English
- Environment awareness and protection
- Cross-cultural understanding
- Self-confidence
- Self-value
- Life skills like hygiene, cooking, waste management
- Family planning
- Sexual reproductive health
- And even physical self-defense with a qualified trainer!
Bali WISE is a beautiful Women Empowerment organization that mastered making tremendously much from very little. Since more than a decade ago, more than 1700 young Indonesian women have been educated and assisted in their career development.
Karl Gart supported the R.O.L.E. Foundation in organizational restructuring and helped guide them through the rough times of the 2020-2022 pandemic.
From a thought, through an impulse to an action
Sometimes it takes a solid impulse to finally reveal what we hardly worked on to the world. Thanks to the event invitation from Bali WISE, Karl Gart published the Women of Asia website and composed a song for marginalized women to remind them of their strength, value, and right to choose their life paths.
“I Know the Longer Way” is a song about what to do when people we love use words like love and care to manipulate us into serving their plans, judgment, and opinions. Every “you can’t” was replaced by “I can!” in the song.
From this point, Women of Asia will post stories, guidance, advice, and interesting information in the women empowerment field.
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