Half-year Review 2009

Image by jmhullot via Flickr

This NewsBlog entry is a half-year review of our activities and achievements so far this year and covers UK and Nepal operations as well as financial and non-financial work.

The financials
So far this year we have raised £9500 which compares favourably with the half year point in 2008. However this is a little misleading since in the latter half of 2008 we had our Everest Base Camp trek which boosted our income significantly. Despite this we are on track to equal last year's fundraising of around £12,000. Specifically this year we have had a fantastic corporate grant from Enterprise Learning (£5000) and now receive monthly donations of £123 from 11 supporters. From a spending viewpoint we transferred £5770 to our account in Kathmandu to fund the whole operation in 5 schools until April 2010. This money pays for 4 teachers, 95 school bags, 964 textbooks and 21,112 exercise books! All this for 662 children from the lowest castes and poorest families, mostly in shanty towns.

Events
We ran our usual Easter trek in the Lake District which this year was The Shamrock Traverse, a route in the Mosedale Valley which ascends Pillar using a high level, rocky climbers traverse with an interesting short scramble near the top. We had a small group of 10 and raised about £700. We have a further trek scheduled for September, The Cumbrian 3 Peaks, but so far uptake is slow. A decision will be taken at the end of June as to whether this event runs or not.

UK schools
As everyone will know we have great support from two Cumbrian Schools, Haverigg Schools and St Jame's School in Millom. However we have just found a third school to join us from Hook Norton in Oxfordshire thanks to the efforts of Nancy Hathway one of our supporters. We have a meeting with the school Head soon to discuss our relationship and potential links with Kathmandu.

Nepal Schools
The two main pieces of news concern the appointment of a new sponsored teacher at Bal Kalyan school and the provision of a one week training course on Water, Hygiene and Sanitation for 12 teachers. At the end of May our 4th sponsored teacher was appointed at Bal Kalyan school situated in the Balaju district with pupils drawn mostly from the shanty town community on the banks of the river Bagmati. Krishna Thapa is well qualified for this work in many respects both from his formal eduation as well as the fact that he is from the same community himself. It is very pleasing to report however that one of our donor-supporters is paying his full salary for 5 years!
As reported elsewhere on this NewsBlog we funded a five day training course in May for 12 teachers to help them learn how to implement an addition to the school curriculum on Water, Hygiene & Sanitation. This was an important step forward for us since it enabled us to influence what is taught in the schools AND to develop the teacher's delivery skills. The course was highly successful judging by the feedback and each school is now at the early stages of implementation.

Nepal Situation
Finally we must comment on the current situation in Nepal itself. As many of you will know four of us travelled to Kathmandu at the end of April primarily for the wedding of Sharon and Michael, but also to work for a couple of weeks with our five schools. We arrived at a time when Nepal was facing severe water shortages, strikes affecting fuel supplies, and power outages of 16 hours per day. On top of this the political situation was tense, mainly caused by the lack of consensus between the main parties in the coalition government and an ongoing row between the majority Maoist party and the Army Chief.

The day before the wedding we managed to visit one of our schools, Kesh Chandra, in the centre of old Kathmandu where we had some discussions with the teachers and Sharon led a short English lesson.


Then, the day after the wedding the prime minister sacked the Army Chief, who was then reinstated by the president, leading to the prime minister resigning and a walk-out by the Maoist ministers. In turn this was followed by violent street protests and there seemed a high risk of a military coup. Our family said "get out quick" ....... so we did, and flew home the day after that! Now, this was naturally a huge disappointment to all concerned, especially everyone at the 5 schools who were looking forward to working with us in a variety of ways.
The situation in Nepal continues to be difficult, there is now a new prime minister who didn't even win a seat at the last elections (don't ask!), a new coalition government without the largest party (the Maoists) and daily agitation on the streets.Thankfully the power outages are down to only 4 hours per day.
So, we soldier on, please keep your donations flowing, join in an event if you can, or run one of your own, and if you can manage a regular monthly donation .... no matter how small, this would be fantastic. Just email us and we'll explain how to do it.