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span class="caption" style="width: 398px;">JP/Luh De SuriyaniA Bali-based midwife providing free health service to thousands of poor pregnant women through her clinic in Ubud has been named the 2011 CNN Hero of the Year.

Hemmerle Robin Teresa Jehle, a native of Arizona who has been living in Bali for about 20 years and is known to the locals as Robin Lim, was selected as the winner from 10 finalists on Sunday evening in Los Angeles, Monday morning
Indonesia time, after nine months of online voting.

The finalists were all social activists who were selected from over 10,000 nominees in more than 100 countries.

Lim’s clinic, the Bumi Sehat Foundation, was granted US$250,000, while the 10 finalists received $50,000.

Since 2003, the foundation has provided medical treatment for thousands of pregnant women in Bali and Aceh.

“The very best way that I know is to support your midwifery with care, so that midwives can help lower the risks of motherhood. We can be safe together, mothers and babies,” she said in her speech.

When The Jakarta Post met Robin several months ago in Ubud, she said that if she won, she would use the prize to build another clinic on land she owned. The clinic she currently operates in Ubud is built on rented land. The clinic’s facilities are limited, particularly in childbirth and treatment rooms.

“I plan to build another clinic in Nyuh Kuning village. I already have the land,” she said, explaining that she wanted to build a clinic with more comprehensive facilities for mothers and babies, including a vegetable plantation.

Robin said her clinic focused on gentle birth and exclusive breast feeding. She believed that gentle birth would give better impacts both physically and mentally to both mother and baby. She has also written books in Indonesian and English to campaign for gentle birth.

The clinic also provides scholarships for dozens of young women who want to be midwives in their respective villages in order to expand midwifery services to remote areas.

Anak Agung Istri Sayang, a 59-year-old senior midwife, was helping the birth of two babies at the clinic in Ubud on Monday morning when CNN announced Robin’s victory from Los Angeles.

“Some people watching the announcement at Ibu Robin’s house were cheering. I was at the clinic helping the birth of two babies,” said Sayang, who retired from a community health center in Klungkung.

A woman from Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, who lives in Bali and has just given birth to her first baby boy, said that Robin’s victory could help more mothers and babies in Indonesia.

The clinic now has nine full-time midwives and several foreign volunteers. With only 10 beds for patients to give birth to their babies and for postnatal treatment, the clinic looks crowded when there are more than three patients in labor at the same time.

Sayang said that the clinic was more popular among people in Gianyar. “They know that this clinic helps poor patients. The payment is based on a donation system.”