Namaste Children's Fund

Namaste children’s fund supporting community-based education for women and children in underserved regions of nepal

newsletter

Winter 2010

Dear Friends, Namaste and welcome to our 2010 Namaste Children’s Fund (NCF) newsletter. It has been a very interesting year and our organization has grown in strength and focus.

Phil visited Nepal in October, this was his fourth visit in four years and has helped solidify the areas of our focus and determine what is working well and what isn’t. We have three basic project groups but the main focus is on working with the people of the Thehe Village in the remote Humla of Western Nepal. We have been running a hostel for 26 girls from Thehe living and attending school in Simikot (the largest town in the region). We have also been working with the Thehe villagers to build the first six toilets in the village and install a bio-gas plant to generate the energy necessary to operate a school lunch program in the Thehe village school. The toilets and bio-gas plant are finished but not operational yet due to a lack of water.

The villagers have committed to installing a water scheme with the help of another NGO. NCF is not going to commit any more resources to the bio-gas project until we see how well this pilot scheme works.

We are continuing to provide school supplies and sports equipment to the teachers in the Thehe school.

A family and their home in Thehe village. The village is currently too overcrowded and lacks resources to facilitate building a school.

Our school hostel project is inspiring. 12 months ago 26 girls were nominated from the Thehe Village school and we established a hostel in Simikot where they live and attend a private school. The girls are doing very well, they are committed, work extremely hard and are obviously intelligent and eager to learn. Their living conditions and the local school they attend are less than optimum. The school teachers range in age from 15 to 20 years old and have limited qualifications to be teachers. Our hostel is on leased land and it is not viable to develop this land with the necessary vegetable garden, green houses, fruit trees, bio-gas toilets etc. required to be sustainable. continued on page 2

The town of Simikot, just a few hours walk from Thehe village, where NCF will begin our school building program.

© Namaste Children’s Fund 2010. All Rights Reserved.

Namaste Children’s Fund c/o Artxchange Gallery | 512 1st Ave South | Seattle, WA 98104 | 206-839-0377 www.namastechildrensfund.org

Namaste

supporting community-based education for women and children in underserved regions of nepal

children’s fund

continued from page 1

NCF wants to build on the inherent strong work ethic of the girls and dramatically improve the schooling and hostel facilities available to them. Over the next two years we are going to focus on developing a model, English medium school for girls in Simikot.

The capital funding of this project has been very generously donated by Phil’s employer, Odyssey Enterprises and upon completion we hope to have a school with 300 students and a boarding school housing 120 girls. The long term sustainability of this school will be enhanced by a student sponsorship program and we hope many of you will join with us in sponsoring a student.

Our wish is to connect our cultures through this program and with electricity now available in Simikot we can use technology to make this an engaging and mutually inspiring experience. We will also develop the support structure required to have volunteers live at the school and teach the students. Our first volunteers are Tad and Megan Williams, a young couple from the Seattle area (Megan’s mother Sandy is a director of NCF) are going to be living with our girls for up to two months early in 2011.

The other NCF projects are doing well. We have a wonderful young lady teaching 42 girls at the Gargen Chyoling Nunnery.

NCF pays the teacher wages and supplies school materials and a computer. We also continue to support the Hindu Vidyapeth School in Dang and we have two students (Gyeni and Amrita) from Thehe village living at the school and we sponsor 58 students from the local Dang area to attend the school.

We continue to be inspired by the young people of Nepal. The young students are motivated and diligent but also fun loving and kind. They express profound gratitude and appreciation to all the NCF supporters for the opportunity to improve their lives. Thank you to you all and Namaste.

Warm regards, Phil Crean and Cora Edmonds, NCF Founders

The Simikot boarding home, set up by NCF, where the girls live while attending school.

You can sponsor a girl for $900 per year!

NCF is excited to announce that personalized student sponsorship is now available for the girls at the Simikot Hostel/School. After successfully running the hostel for over a year, NCF has a realistic picture of the costs associated with accommodating our students.

Currently the girls live at the hostel and attend the Himali school in Simikot. This will transition to our own NCF school in the near future.

The NCF Hostel and School provides: • Qualified teachers • Advanced facilities incl. computers • Nutritious meals • Room and board • Warm winter clothing and uniforms • Books and supplies A high quality education obtained within a few hours walk of their home and families in Thehe.

Sponsors will receive updated photos and progress reports of their student on a yearly basis. As the hostel and school progress, NCF will create ways of keeping in touch via the internet and a system for volunteers to visit the school personally.

Meet the Simikot Boarding Hostel girls on the NCF website where we will post all the current students, their progress, and announce individual sponsorship!

Click here to meet the students: www.namastechildrensfund.org/ HostelStudents.htm

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Namaste

supporting community-based education for women and children in underserved regions of nepal

children’s fund

2010 ncf project photo gallery

The Simikot scholarship girls enjoy a picnic on a misty Humla day. right column (top): The Thehe village toilet and bio-gas project is currently under construction. It will be the first bio-gas facility of its kind in the region, (bottom): A doctor visits the girls at the Simikot girls hostel for regular checkup.

update on gyeni bohara Gyeni Bohara, our Namaste Boy, is still attending school at Hindu-Vidyapeeth (HVP) in Dang and doing very well. He started school at Hindu Vidyapeeth (HVP) in Dang in 2008. In the past two years, Gyeni has moved to the head of his class.

He is a voracious reader and is speaking English quite fluently. He is a hard worker and many teachers and volunteers describe him as a unique person. NCF is incredibly proud of his accomplishments.

Volunteer Melinda Lies worked with the children at HVP for three months and wrote this about Gyeni: Gyeni was one of the first children to approach me and introduce himself. He was concerned if I was OK here or if I needed anything. I had the children write essays about themselves as a way to get to know them better. Gyeni’s essay was very detailed and at the bottom added a paragraph titled “what about you.” In that paragraph, he asked many questions about who I was and also if I liked everyone and Nepal. He was the only student at CPH to ask about me and “think outside the box” so to speak and incorporate his own thoughts into the essay.

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Namaste

supporting community-based education for women and children in underserved regions of nepal

children’s fund

interview with chimey sherpa What is special about the Humla region and the people who live there?

NCF would not be possible without Chimey Sherpa, general manager of Nepal operations. Chimey lives in Kathmandu and spends much of the year traveling for NCF business. He visits the Humla region, including Thehe village and the Simikot Girls Hostel, four times per year and is becoming a trusted friend to the people in the region.

Ever since I left India in 1996, I have found myself around the Himalayas among my fellow citizens learning life in its simplest forms. I graduated from St. Joseph's College in Darjeeling and got admitted in Osmania University in South India trying to complete my master in Anthropology. My lovely parents and 3 siblings have their roots in Solu Khumbu (Everest Region), but we all got acquainted to the Hills of Darjeeling when my grandpa started his mountaineering career during British Raj. To these days, our love for the Himalayas and its people remain same as it was to my late Grandpa.

How did your early career start?

It was one fine morning in the spring of 1995 when I exchanged smiles with a tall man with blue eyes huge camera hung in his left shoulder. I was staying in a middle range hotel in the city of Kolkota and was talking in Bengali with the front office official. The man was Felix Roig, a photo journalist from Spain. We spent few evenings together and started working on a project about life in the slums of Kolkota. Later we decided to work on Everest Region and about Sherpas.

Felix left for Spain and I decided to remain in Nepal.

Having special feelings for Himalayas and for the people, I decided to establish a trekking outfit. Since then, I have been taking people to the Himalayas.

During the worst years of the Maoist situation, I left for Tibet and worked as a group leader for a Local Tibetan inbound agency for 2 years. Now I am back in Nepal and still working with www.letsgonepal.com.

To this date Nepal remains 12th poorest country in this world and Humla is the poorest district out of the 75 districts of Nepal. Although, blessed with the abundance of nature and good people, it makes me feel sad where we are heading. Manipulated by the nexus of few privileged casts and a system rooted from the age old culture of nepotism, the Humla region still remains where it started. Thus we strive not to change the entire country of Nepal but are looking forward for Humla and its beautiful people What do you think is the most necessary thing to improve life in Thehe?

Education, family planning and proper organization of the people.

What kinds of jobs are available in the Humla region? What is the future for children who receive an education?

At present, almost all the skilled workers (health workers, teachers, electricians, plumbers, hair dressers, NGO’s and NGO’s staff) are brought to Humla from other districts of Nepal. I believe in the future we can fill these job positions with our own people.

What is the most remote place you’ve ever trekked to?

Kanchenjunga trek from Nepal side and upper Mustang Nepal.

Sherpa visits the Gargen Chyoling Nunnery. The education of the young nuns is funded in part by NCF.

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Namaste

supporting community-based education for women and children in underserved regions of nepal

children’s fund

Project Expenses

for the 9 months ended September 2010

All administrative costs are paid by the NCF founders, so 100% of your contributions will be spent in Nepal developing and supporting the NCF programs.

NCF extends special thanks to volunteers Gaelen Sayres and David Helberg (Regression Studios) for bringing the Namaste Story to life in a fantastic digital story. You can view the video on our website at: www.namastechildrensfund.org/history.htm

NCF

is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to supporting the underserved communities of Nepal as efficiently as possible. NCF believes that education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty and empowering individuals to improve socioeconomic conditions for their families, communities and future generations.

Thank you & Namaste to all of our donors.

Your support is deeply appreciated.

NCF extends a big Thank You to Seattlebased Crooked Trails for raising a donation at the 2010 Venice is Sinking masquerade ball. Their $2,500 donation is going towards the building of the new Simikot school NCF is currently developing. Crooked Trails is a nonprofit, community-based travel organization helping people broaden their understanding of the planet and its diverse cultures through responsible travel programs.

NCF founder Cora Edmonds and volunteers Mugoux Varra and Lauren Davis at the Venice is Sinking fundraiser.

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