Schedule for schools development

Our recent successes in funding and organisation have now placed us in a far better position to plan and schedule the next 8 months or so work in Kathmandu. For example, without the recently awarded grant funding we were a little uncertain as to the scope and nature of next April’s annual Capability Programme. Likewise the volunteering of a number of Cumbrian secondary school teachers now enables us to start planning for some in-school elements to the programme we have not been previously able to consider.
This has also now enabled us to focus more on how best to get added value from our three salaried Nepali Tutors beyond their day to day teaching and occasional running of workshops. There is much planning, organising and background research to be done in Kathmandu that could help us to optimise our efforts and our funding. For example we are still relatively in the dark about the content of the current national teacher training programme in Nepal! Likewise we have found it difficult in short discussions and via email to ascertain what would most benefit the 7 schools in terms of teacher training. Also, how can we stimulate more activity on the British Council’s Global Schools Partnership programme? These are all projects we have allocated to our Tutors and we will be reporting on their findings here in the coming months.
You can view a full outline of our calendar of events in Kathmandu on our main website at http://www.nepalschoolsaid.co.uk/id27.html

Good news always comes in 3's ……….

What a week this has been, almost everything we have been working for coming to fruition in a way that makes it all worthwhile! Of course all of the items listed below have been worked on for weeks and months in some cases, it’s just that they all were finalised this week.

1. Millom School (Cumbria) Partnership:
The Head Teacher at this Cumbria secondary school has agreed to work with us in a number of different ways including a Global Schools Partnership with Himalaya School, pupils learning about Nepal across their normal curriculum, and …… a supply of teachers volunteering to visit Nepal as part of our annual Teacher Development Programme. So far a total of 7 have volunteered to go in April 2011. Brilliant, and we will be working with them this autumn to slot into our schedule and curriculum.

2. Cambridge University-BackPact Education Project:
This is a group of students from St Catherine’s College, Cambridge who visit a range of countries each year with an aim as follows: “ Simply put, we use theatrical play educationally. We do not intend to teach children ‘about the theatre’, but rather, we are interested in using theatre and performance as a way for young children, many of whom live in difficult circumstances, to build confidence, express their individuality, and have lots of fun.”
We are arranging for them to spend a week across two of our schools, Bal Bigyan and Bal Vinod in mid August. Exciting stuff and a reward for these two schools who have worked well with us since April to action some of the management training they received in April.

3. Maitri Trust Financial Backing:
We are MORE than pleased to announce that we have been awarded funding by the Maitri Trust to finance the majority of our teacher training programme for the next three years. This will cover expenses of a number of teachers travelling to Nepal each year (but not all), venue costs, material costs etc etc in Kathmandu across a 2 week programme each year.
The Maitri Trust are the charitable foundation of an investment company who want minimal publicity so we are doing our best to respect that here in not revealing too much about them.

So, good news all round from a work and financial standpoint. However we still need the continuing support of our regular donors to maintain the material aspect of our programme such as exercise books, textbooks, school bags. And of course the Maitri Trust have funded about 2/3 of the programme cost, meaning we still need to find another £4000 or so each year.

Wanted: Major sponsor for NSA Capability Programme

The headline says it all with NSA seeking a sponsor who will underwrite our annual teacher training programme in Nepal in exchange for all the features of exclusive branding with a progressive charity.
The 2010 programme was a major success as judged by the feedback from the 50 teacher and head teacher delegates AND the recognition from Nepal’s Ministry of Education in seeking to work with us on the design and evaluation of the programme in future years. This is therefore a great opportunity for recognition and marketing on a NATIONAL scale either in the UK or Nepal.
The programme is dependent on receiving sustainable support to fund flights and accommodation for UK tutors travelling to Nepal plus the running costs of the week long programme to include venue, equipment, delegate materials and delegate subsistence.
Our lowest estimate of the potential costs are in the order of £7,500 to £10,000 and we would like to hear from any individuals or corporates who would be interested in discussing a partnership with us.

info@nepalschoolsaid.co.uk

Next UK overseas development minister (?) provides the final piece of the jigsaw

Naturally as a UK registered charity we are completely apolitical, but that doesn’t stop us wanting the Conservative party to win the general election on May 6th! Strategically this could provide us with direct access to the “new” Minister for Overseas Development, Geoffrey Clifton Brown who just happens to be also our local MP/representative. Geoffrey has been an outstanding local MP for many years and as our MP we receive direct access to him through his regular “surgeries”. So should the Conservative Party win next Thursday the new Minister becomes instantly accessible.

Today, Geoffrey just happened to be in our village campaigning for votes and we took the opportunity to have a chat with him about our work at Nepal Schools Aid and ………. surprise surprise he seemed to know about us! He also seemed well aware of current political conditions in Nepal and invited us to come and see him to discuss our work further.

So, the jigsaw is almost completed where we now have a working agreement with a partner NGO in Nepal, we await a similar agreement from Nepal’s Ministry of Education, and have the opportunity to discuss the role of DFID in Nepal and it’s over-focus on capital projects as opposed to capability based legacy projects in the education sector.