To give you an idea of how cold it can get in Ladakh in the winter: recently Leh recorded the lowest temperature of the season at minus 22.2 degrees Celsius. That’s bearable if you have central heating, and good insulation, but if you don’t, as you wouldn’t if you lived in Ladakh, then life gets very difficult. You have to wrap up indoors as if you were outdoors! Those that can leave and go south in the winter do.
December 2010-November 2011
Welcome to our new logo! I think it does a better job at encapsulating what we are about than our old text-only version. I hope you agree.
IN MEMORIAM
This newsletter is dedicated to Tony Abrahams, who died this April. My first overseas teaching job took place in Morocco from 1976 to1978, under the auspices of the Centre for British Teachers (now shortened to CfBT). I lost touch with “The Centre” for many years after that, so was very surprised when an email plopped into my in-tray three years ago from Tony Abrahams, The Centre’s larger-than-life founder with a soft spot for the Gurkhas. He had tracked me down via the Internet, and became, in the last three years, a generous supporter of HELP, with sponsorships and donations. My wife, Yami, and I attended a touching commemoration of his life at his old school, Bedford College.
After the event, we were delighted to receive a cheque for £15,000 from CfBT, in Tony’s memory, which will be used to construct a new school building for the Vidyar Sagar Gyanpeeth school in western Sikkim.
(See photo at the bottom of the page)
The school is currently housed in a picturesque, but totally inadequate wooden building that is now too small, gets flooded in the monsoon and which has been damaged in the recent earthquake.
With the help of our donors, including a very generous £700 from St. Aloyisius' College in Glasgow, Scotland, where one of our past volunteers, Judith Scott, works as a nurse, the foundations of a new school building have been laid.The £15,000 from CfBT will provide the funds needed to build on these foundations, and there will be some left over to plough into other projects in the future.
So: farewell and heartfelt thanks to Tony; our condolences to Liz Bryant, his bereaved partner, and our gratitude to her for facilitating this happy outcome. Lastly, our thanks to CfBT for their generosity. A plaque, in Tony’s honour, will be attached to the new school building. We will display a photograph of it in our 10th anniversary newsletter, next year.
OTHER PROJECTS
Teacher training
This is, to my mind, the most important thing we do, because it will have an impact on teaching standards long after we leave the scene. This year Barbara Porter, our trainer, ran two two-week seminars, one in Pokhara, Nepal, in January, and the other in Leh, Ladakh in September (read more…). It's always good to get positive feedback. This is what the principal of the Lamdon Model Senior Secondary School in Leh wrote:
In March 2012 I will be visiting Bhutan with a view to setting up a teacher training seminar in Thimpu later in the year. But it isn't just the formal teacher training seminars that count. Our volunteers also play their part. This is what Henrike Elter, who went to a small school in western Nepal, reports:
The Tamang family
I often ask friends and acquaintances to do things for HELP when they are visiting Nepal. An old friend of mine took some pictures of a family in Kathmandu that are receiving sponsorship money from our sponsors, one of them being the afore-mentioned Tony Abrahams. Tony was upset by the conditions in which the family were living, and made a donation of £500 to ease their plight. The nameless friend who took the photos contributed another £500, and the money has been spent on some solar powered lights (to enable the children to do their homework at night) and a couple of cows to help their mother earn a living.
The Gyan Jyoti school, Kalimpong
The children of Highfields school in Newark, England, have continued their generous support of the Gyan Jyoti school, just outside Kalimpong. This year we received a cheque for £446 which will cover the cost of two sponsorships, initiated by Mairi McGivern when she was a volunteer there, and a generator, and there will be some left over for other projects that we will support in future.
The JN memorial primary school, Kalimpong
We have sent £1,200 to the JN Memorial school to enable them to complete the second storey of their small school building. This project is now complete. Many thanks again to Anne Tallentire and her family and friends for all their help in getting us there.
St. Paul School, Namthang, South Sikkim
In our last newsletter, we reported on the need for a landslide wall for this, the first school in our portfolio. For various reasons, partly to do with the need to wait for work to be completed on the road below the school, progress has been slow, but a large part has now been built. Here is a picture of progress so far.
Bee Pooley, who volunteered at St. Paul’s this year, made a personal donation of £150 to the school so that they could build a decent toilet for the boys.
Volunteer donations
Bob and Ann Summers, both HELP volunteers, who taught at the Lamdon Model Senior school in 2009, and in Nepal in 2010, sent 400 books to the school this year. This is always a bit risky, since parcels frequently get lost in the post, but they duly arrived, and Barbara Porter took pictures of them being being devoured! We have also received a number of smaller donations from people who have been instructed by Bob to pay us for the private maths coaching that he does for their children. He also sent us £110 that he was supposed to spend on a birthday present for himself. Many thanks Bob, and to all our volunteers who continue supporting our work!
The Hope Family Trust, Kalimpong
Earlier this year we sent £500 to a small local NGO in Kalimpong, called the Hope Family Trust, for uniforms for 50 pupils. Schools will not accept children without uniforms, so this small donation has enabled 50 children to have a schooling! This has been followed up recently, with a £1000 gift for computers for their orphanage and repairs to houses damaged in the recent earthquake.
EARTHQUAKE
Last year was marked by floods in Ladakh and Uttarkhand. This year West Bengal and Sikkim were hit by a severe earthquake. In both cases the consequences for the population is the same: death (over 100), injury, and the destruction of homes. I have recently seen a photograph of a landslide near Darjeeling that has carried the road completely away, and has left the train track that serves the little Himalayan railway dangling in thin air! Although HELP is an educational charity, our ‘objects’ include a general commitment to the relief of poverty, and so we have sent £1,000 to the Hope Family Trust in Kalimpong, some of which will be earmarked for house repairs.
INSPECTION VISITS
We did not run any inspection visits this year, but will be visiting West Bengal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal for a month in March and April 2012. I will be doing the Annapurna Sanctuary trek from 31 March to 10th April, give or take a day either end. One or two others have expressed an interest. Let me know if you would like to join us!
VOLUNTEERS
Thirteen volunteers signed up this year. Apart from one unfortunate volunteer who couldn't reach her school because of a political strike (read more…), and a cancellation due to illness, all the rest reached their destinations. It's funny how interest in different regions differs from year to year. Until this year, we had difficulty finding volunteers wanting to go to Himachal Pradesh in India and also the remote schools in the Western Region of Nepal. This year, for the first time, two volunteers went to schools in the Annapurna conservation area (click here to see Henrike Elter's fascinating account of her stay at the Sree Sarada Primary School in Phalate), and two to the Gamru village school near Dharamsala, where the Tibetan government in exile is based.
Special mention goes to Ananda Hall (see picture) who introduced music lessons to the JN Memorial school, near Kalimpong, and stayed on during the school's summer break to run extra music lessons for the children. (Click here to see her pictures).
SPONSORSHIPS
We have been running our sponsorship programme for eight years now, so naturally we are beginning to see some of the younger children coming to the end of their schooling, and no longer requiring our support. And, of course, there are always one or two who drop out for one reason or another (including an elopement!), which is disappointing. Very occasionally, it’s our sponsors who have to withdraw.. Luckily, we have always managed to find a substitute sponsor in these rare cases.
Currently, we have 36 sponsors sponsoring 56 young people, a couple of whom are in college training to be a radiographer and nurse respectively (read more…)
FUND RAISING
It will be no surprise to you that we are always on the look-out for money , and it would be remiss of me to let this opportunity to pass without reminding you of this fact! We even have an exciting new way for you to give your spare pennies! But before I reveal all, let me remind all of you who give or would like to give money to HELP that virtually all your money is used to fund our projects or sponsorships (the only deductions are to pay international bank transfer charges). How do we pull off this remarkable trick? Surely we have expenses? Fees to pay? Fares? We do indeed, but our running and fixed costs are paid for out of the administration fee/deposit, paid to us by our volunteers in return for their placements. So rest assured that virtually 100% of your money goes towards our projects and children. There are not many charities that could give you this assurance.
JustTextGiving
Now, here is the exciting new way of giving, if you use a British-based mobile phone service. It’s called JustTextGiving. It’s so simple and fun that I know you will all want to give it a go! All you have to do is to text EHLP19, plus the amount you want to donate, to 70070. So, for example, if you want to donate £10, all you do is to text EHLP19 £10 to 70070, and £10 will wing its way to HELP. If everyone receiving this newsletter texted £10, we would receive £3,300!
(Please note that JustTextGiving only accepts 6 amounts from donors. These are £1, £2, £3, £4, £5, and £10. A donation of £4.50, £7 or £20 for example will not go through.)
And don't forget, wherever you live, you can send us a donation any time by going to our donations page.
Everyclick
Readers of past newsletters will be aware that if they use Everyclick as their search engine, HELP receives a small payment, at no cost to them. It all adds up. So far we have raised £65 through your clicks, of which £33.76 has been raised by just one indefatigable anonymous clicker. We could do a lot better if I could persuade a lot more of you to make Everyclick your default search engine! Here’s where to start: www.everyclick.com/himalayaneducationlifelineprogramme . But if you would prefer to use a more familiar name to do your Internet searches, then Yahoo now run a scheme called Affilyon.
Affilyon
To raise money for HELP using Yahoo's search engine, please visit: sites.affilyon.co.uk/Himalayaneducation
Facebook and LinkedIn
HELP is now networking via its pages in Facebook and LinkedIn. Keep in touch and help to raise our profile by joining us!
The HELP blog
And don’t forget to visit our blog, where you can keep up-to-date with HELP news, and news about the communities we operate in.
Well, that's it for this year. Many thanks for all your support and good wishes.
Merry Christmas to all of you, and a happy new year!
Jim Coleman
Executive Director
The sound of the loud TV that only plays Bollywood productions suddenly went quiet. The busy Lodge Owner laughed, looked for the dim LED-lamp, and admitted that such power outs were extremely common. The solar battery that illuminates the most important corner of the room had forgotten its responsibility, and so now it was time for bed when the sun went down in wait of nature’s amazing performance when it would break again over the breathtaking Himalayas the next morning.
Chitre, the town in which I lived, was not so easy to define. Houses line the way of lonely lynchets and little streams. There is not center to the village. How many people live here? I don’t know. There is certainly more animals living here than people. Water buffalos, oxen, cows, goats, dogs, donkeys, horses and mules move seemingly without any masters through the meadows and paths. Fences are unknown here. Geographically, we find ourselves in Western Nepal in the Annapurna Conservation Project at a height of 2350 meters.
The school teacher picks me up. Her shriveled face beams and her few teeth, the ones that she still has left, shine out with every laugh. I would hear her complain often about the painful toothaches throughout the course of our time together. She is happy and proud to have a Westerner teach there in her little school for the first time. She told me that she has been teaching there for 30 years. She does not have her own family. Her carrier probably stood in the way back when she was young, and so now she lives with her older brother in a tiny house where the floor is strewn with potatoes and other treasures. Their entire estate is made up of the two water buffalos and a tiny field. Running water is only to be found outside.
Balancing and jumping from stone to stone, I attempt to avoid the mud as I cross a riverbed and eventually arrive at the school. It takes 10 minutes to get the school. After looking in surprise at the dirty feet of the children where countless leeches have already been feeding, I both feel very lucky to have escaped the nasty bloodsuckers and at the same time feel sorry for the schoolchildren that have come from the remote villages with unpronounceable names like Ghoptekharka.
With both curiosity and a somewhat of a stomachache, I enter the schoolroom. Two other school workers are there with me; their name I still do not know to this day because the people only address each other with “Sir” and “Miss.” They seemed to be in their 40s. One of them is wearing jogging trousers with a dress shirt on, and the other one inexplicably wears a hat and scarf as I am constantly wiping the sweat profusely dripping from my forehead. We all greet each other with “Namaste,” a word that gives tourists the illusion of knowing Nepalese. But the truth is that this greating was made up simply for the tourists…after a few days I find out that the Nepali people have totally different ways of greeting each other.
The school day begins with fitness time performed to drum music. Lost in thought, I observe the children separated in different orderly groups. There are 30 children there. They all have school uniforms, pale blue shirts with dark blue trousers. Many of the shirts and trousers are dirty, torn, too big or too small, and a complete row of children is not wearing any uniform. I look at the different faces of the children going down the row and I see their eyes looking with curiosity in my direction.
Most of the children look happy, a few look frightened. One of the boys had a boil on his eye, another had a large pigment defect on his face. A third boy moved rhythmically to the music but could apparently not bend his knee. One of the little girls made a game of always singing faster than the other children. The teacher quickly stopped the song and the little speed-singing girl looked innocently at the ground…she would play this game often in the future, and I took joy in observing that these children were in many ways no different from children in other parts of the world.
Finally, with a few words of broken English and some shy gestures, the teacher signaled that I should go before the schoolchildren. A couple of the children then put beautiful flower necklaces around my neck. I was being welcomed by the school as I stood there clueless in front of the group. Eventually, I managed a very uncertain “Namaste.” As I stood there wondering whether a little speech was expected, suddenly all the children began funneling to their particular classes. I was allowed to choose the class where I wanted to teach and move to other classes as I desired … a little irritated, I wondered if they had any kind of lesson plans at all. With puppets, clay, coloring crayons, notebooks and pictures in hand, I set out to the 4rth graders. I was told that it was difficult to use the Western interactive and child centered teaching methods there in Asia…but the children prove to me that this was not true. They love to talk with puppets! The blackboard is turned into a shopping paradise where the children can choose the toothpaste, potatoes and bread (as well as airplanes and dogs) that they want to buy. With devotion and persistence, they practice their role-playing games until they are good enough to sell any tourist their merchandise in the best English. Any words in which the sounds “F” or “P” are found give the children great difficulty. They can hardly hear the difference. We work long on these kinds of words. They always look on with awe whenever I take out new things. Even the clay gave them entertainment that they could not get enough of. Every day I try to think up new assignments where they can use clay. They make plates, cups, fruit, vegetables and other wonderful objects that make our mouths water. Then we sit down together at the table and begin.
Dinner is served! Let the child-made clay dishes be set on the table, and we learn to eat almost as properly as they do in England. What one should do with a butter knife on their plate is for most children still an inexplicable riddle when we are finished. With the 1st graders, I am forced immediately to lower my expectations of what I will be able to teach. The little 4-year-old Risiram sleeps at his table at exactly 3:00, and in the darker corner of the classroom, Mohan uses a stone to hammer on a nut that just previously had fallen on his desk (the kind of nut that turn all the children’s hands black from pealing them). Santi steals his neighbor’s writing utensil and Bikas, who cannot remember if he is 10 or 11, attempts to bring his fellow classmates into order. I learn quickly that the only methods of learning for this class are songs, rhymes and learning vocabulary, and I teach them games to achieve this. The crayons that I had brought are laying untouched on the table, and I am perplexed why nobody has snatched them up to color and draw with. For a long time I hope for more coloring enthusiasm, until I finally realize that I need to first demonstrate how drawing and coloring is done!
The teacher suggests that I use the English book. But as I am flipping through the pages, I find countless English mistakes…I decide to use my own exercises. With the 5th graders, I finally come to teaching mathematics. We go through basic calculation and try a few word problems out.
To my delight, I found an old yellowed world map and a globe in the teaching room. The oldest students want to show me where Nepal is on the map. They look in Africa, in Europe, finally they find their country. Even the teachers have difficulty with the map, and I attempt to show them the path that I traveled to come to their little town.
The first part of the school day is from 10:00am to 1:00pm. After this, we are allowed to relax in Taradevi’s kitchen. The water pot steams over an open fire. Everything is black because of the soot, the walls, the ceiling, the pot, the buffalo meat that is hung for smoking. There is tee with cookies for us. On special days we get homemade chips, noodle soup or momos. We are not the only ones in the kitchen; travel sellers, village elders, and nursing mothers meet us there. A letter from the regulatory authorities has come in and is being read. In Sikha there are poachers underway. One must stay away from hunting wild jungle animals. Since nobody here speaks more than a couple words of English, I watch the interesting interaction as I sip my sugar-sweet tea. At my side, a few children gather by me and try to teach me a full Nepali vocabulary. I give up trying to understand them.
The school day is long, from 10:00am to 4:00pm. It seems as if I am the only one that stays in the classroom for the whole time. The other teachers use the time to get things done in the office, giving the children writing assignments and waiting for homework that needs to be corrected. In the classes they have the children repeat the correct answers. But they are good teachers. The love the children and really give themselves to the task of teaching them. These teachers are always peeking with curiosity on my classes, looking with interest at my blackboard and wanting to touch the clay themselves. Soon they also begin teaching such crafts, make vocabulary cards, draw large clocks for teaching time and trying other new techniques that they have seen. In this way, we support each other and learn from one another. They observe my new methods and I immerse myself in the Nepalese culture and am supported by them with disciplinary problems.
A Party Member has been sent to inspect the school. As he comes to our school, he does not have much time left. In an unfriendly manner, he bids the children to spell blackboard. They have no idea who it is that is standing before them, and do not react quickly enough. Without waiting for anyone to answer, the Maoist begins ranting how terrible the quality of the teaching is there and beseeches me to show the other teachers how they ought to instruct. I stand there feeling very uncomfortable and try to not to make any of the teachers loose face….
The 6 and a half weeks were over far too fast for me. The Hindu gods demand offerings and there is once again much to celebrate. This gives the school another two weeks of holiday and I took advantage my last days there by hiking through the mountains. And the people did not let me go without a beautiful and touching goodbye party. 30 children come to me and hang flower wreaths about my neck so that I can barely breathe because of the strong flower aromas around me. They put the palms of their hands together and look me one last time in the eyes. Fathers come and thank me, we take pictures with the teachers and village elders, I am given a last omelet to eat, and I feel obliged to give a hesitant promise that I will come back someday.Voluntary Service in Nepal Report
(Henrike Elter, Shree Sherada Primary School, Phalate, Myagdi District, 18.8.-2.10.)
Bob and Ann Summers, both HELP volunteers, who taught at the Lamdon Model Senior school in Leh in 2009, sent 400 books to the school this year. This is always a bit risky, since parcels frequently get lost in the post, but they duly arrived, and Barbara Porter took pictures to show how they are being devoured!
Lovely books!
Making the most of donated books
Ananada Hall introduced music to her classes at the JN Memorial school during her assignment from mid-May to the second week of August this year. The children loved these lessons so much, they gladly attended Ananada’s classes during their summer holiday.
Here are a couple of pictures she sent us:
Not all our volunteers make it to their schools. Here is Sarah Dagnall’s report on what she encountered on her way to her assignment:
“A few days before my teaching placement at St Anthony’s School in was to begin (February 2011), we had planned to spend a few days in the hill station of Darjeeling, then head on east to Mungpu. The plan was thwarted by the echoing repercussions of history and race as the local people planned their next steps towards winning an independent state called Gorkaland. Briefly, Gorkaland is the name given to Darjeeling and the Duars in north west Bengal and for Nepali / Gorkhali-speaking Gorkha ethnic group amongst a majority of Bengali speaking Bengali ethnic group and has been an issue they have been fighiting for sibce 1980s.
On the evening of the third day of our stay in Darjeeling it was announced the town would be shutting down to show their solidarity in favour of the creation of the independent Gorkha state. As a result of the action, everything and everyone was closed, with pharmacies and hotels the only exceptions (and even they started locking the doors behind you).
As it became clear that the strike would be indefinite, everyone was given the afternoon / evening to get their things in order, stock up on food and drink and many tourists used this time to flee. We watched from our hotel room window as a long line of jeeps headed down the mountain. My husband and I thought on it, and decided to sit it out. Our reasons for staying were fairly prosaic and practical: Mungpu is only 35km away, and the trip back down to the plains long and sick-inducing. We spoke to a taxi driver and got an offer to take us to Mungpu that night, for an inflated price but we were willing to pay. During a difficult communication with the headteacher (due to fuzzy phone lines), he advised not to travel to Mungpu as on arrival there would be nobody to teach due to the strike!
The next day we bought a paper - pretty much the only cash transaction on offer, apart from buying bandages and mineral water - and found out that two protestors had been killed by the police in Sibchu. Pondering this, we went on a long walk up to the northern end of the town passing, on the way back, a smouldering building, which we soon found out was the charred remains of the tourist office.
Although the afternoon’s events had implied a certain gravity in the situation, the atmosphere in the town hadn’t seemed that edgy. There were lots of people strolling around, kids playing cricket and badminton in the empty streets, teens opting for hacky sack using what looked like rolled-up pan scourers, the benches of Chowrasta (the central square) filled with the usual bunch of old men, perhaps reading their newspapers more intently than usual, and the shutters down absolutely everywhere. Even the protestors’ gathering point, which we’d visited the previous day, hadn’t exactly been animated, with lots of people staring up wistfully at the Gorkhaland sign and a small line of women holding up the movement’s distinctive green, white and yellow flag.
The next morning, we’d peeked out the window to see a hundred or so protestors filing past, though we had been warned not to do this by our anxious hotel manager. “They get very emotional,” he said, shaking his head. But it all seemed pretty peaceful to us.
Within a couple of hours of arriving back at the hotel, we got word that the police were evacuating all foreign tourists from Darjeeling. With the good wishes of our worried hotel manager ringing in our ears, we checked out and joined about 10 other backpacked foreigners outside, where we were marched down to the police lines a kilometre and a half off. On arrival, we found a sizable gathering of cops in camouflage gear. Many had rifles, but some just had wooden lathis and charming wicker riot shields. It was amusing, amid the helmets and berets to see the odd police wearing one of those woollen Tibetan hats, usually seen on old women and stoned Westerners.
For some reason, given the apparent seriousness of the situation, we thought we’d be on the move quickly. But we were still working to Indian time and sat around for an hour until a police van drove us back up the hill we’d just walked down. We then sat in the van outside the Foreigners’ Registration Office for over two hours, apparently waiting for more transports for the other tourists so we could drive in convoy (there were about 30 or 40 of us by this stage). And we had thought we were the only ones left in town!
Passing the time, an Australian girl related to us how she and her friend had gone for a walk the day of the protests and, heading past the Magistrate’s residence, she had taken a picture of a car, a White Ambassador. “For no reason,” she said. “It was just a random photo, really.” She showed us the snap on her digital camera. “And the next day,” she said, “This was in the paper.” She pulled out a clipping from the Times of India. It was the exact same photograph - same car, same angle, same size - except in this picture, the car was on fire, having been torched by protestors. We were all flabbergasted and wondered whether her camera had magic powers. I asked her not to take any more pictures of the van we were sitting in.
Just before we left, the man who’d taken our passport numbers for the embassies popped his head through the back door of he van and asked, “Finished?” This question was greeted with no small degree of hilarity, since we’d been sitting there doing nothing for two hours. “I think the question is, are you finished?” quipped the Australian sitting next to me. Despite the long, bumpy drive, everything seemed relaxed. The Police were cracking jokes to the tourists, the cafe owners were calmly dishing up Momos to an unexpected crowd and although we knew it was an important and emotive issue in the area, other than sitting in a Police van, it wasn’t immediately obvioius that anything was amiss. We finally arrived in the city of Siliguri at about 11.30pm, the police dropping us all at the roadside unwhittingly instigating a battle-of-the-westerners for the best hotel room!
We spent a tragic six days in Siliguri, an utterly unremarkable city, waiting to see if the strike would end. It didn’t.
Jim thankfully gave me another assignment, which was to meet with a charity that had previously contacted HELP for their assistance. The charity was Love Himalaya and its purpose was to empower community life through education and leadership. I learned about some of the hardships faced by schools such as poor teacher pay, low retention of teachers, limited resources and poor accommodation. I was humbled and inspired by their enthusiasm, passion and ambition especially in the face of such adversity.
It was a huge shame that I didn’t get to teach at St Anthony’s and I am very sorry that they were let down. I do hope to be able to visit again sometime to make up for it. I hope that in the meantime other volunteers will visit them too. ”
Sarah Dagnall and Will Parkhouse, December 2011
Identifying well-run orphanages to assist in Nepal is very problematic. People with no experience or training can set orphanages up with little supervision from the authorities.
HELP was briefly involved with Mukti Nepal in 2006. It appeared to be a well run orphanage and the children seemed to be well cared for. As a result, we sent a volunteer and some money. However, we withdrew when we saw some negative press reports about the falsification of children’s names.
The situation has obviously deteriorated badly since then. We have just been alerted by someone acting on behalf of Next Generation Nepal (which aims to re-unite so-called ‘orphans’ with their legitimate parents) to the terrible conditions that the children were being kept in in recent years. This is what she says:
“Unfortunately, trafficking for exploitation within children’s homes is a common practice here in Nepal and as part of that, it is also common for documents to be forged. So far it is clear that nearly all of the children’s first names were changed and some of them had their last names changed as well. The goal is not only to get money from the children’s parents in return for the promise of an education, nutritious food, and access to better health care, but also to get money from well-intentioned NGOs and volunteers. Further, the forging of documents allows children to be trafficked for international adoption, without the parent’s knowledge or consent. It is a very lucrative business.
It appears that at some point, the orphanage was moved from the relatively nice location that (we knew) to a place where all the children were kept in just a single room. It is also now clear that Goma’s beatings were so severe they likely were the cause of death for at least one child and some of the other children still bear visible scars from being beaten with an iron rod.
The children are now doing quite well. Of the 20 that were rescued, 14 have been permanently reunited with their families and 3 children are still in the process of reunification, however there are still 3 children for whom we do not have enough information as of yet. ”
This is a warning to all of us, with all our good intentions, to take extreme care in supporting Nepalese orphanages. They can put on a good show for the passing visitor. Our own experiences with orphanages have all been negative, which is why HELP no longer involves itself in this sector.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HELP?: great organization. Not commercial…like a lot of other organizations. (Henrike Elter, Sree Sarada Primary School, Phalate, Nepal: 2011)
In our last newsletter, I announced a new policy that targeted our sponsorship programme on students in their final two years of school and into tertiary education, rather than on younger children. In particular I mentioned that I was looking for people to sponsor a young Nepali man, Gorkhana Pathak, who wanted to train as a doctor. Five of our sponsors stepped forward valiantly, offering to co-sponsor him, but even the sums they were able to commit would not have been enough to pay the bills without help from elsewhere. Happily, I have recently heard that a volunteer who had taught at Gorkhana’s orphanage has secured funds to get him trained in the Czech Republic. There are still many hurdles for Gok - visa, entrance exams, language proficiency tests etc, but I have been able to stand our own sponsors down. Many thanks to them for their generous impulse.
We do have one college level student, Bandana Adhikari, who is being co-sponsored under our programme. She requires £1,300 a year for her nursing programme, and is being supported by three sponsors, with funds from HELP to make good the shortfall. She’s starting her third and final year now.
One of our sponsors, Fiona Tankard, is generously sponsoring Chandraman Tamang, a student radiographer in Kathmandu, to the tune of £660 a year, a very large sum for one person to bear. He is now also in his final year.
We have been running our sponsorship programme for eight years now, so naturally we are beginning to see some of the younger children coming to the end of their schooling, and no longer requiring our support. And, of course, there are always one or two who drop out for one reason or another (including an elopement!), which is disappointing. Very occasionally, it’s our sponsors who have to withdraw.. Luckily, we have always managed to find a substitute sponsor in these rare cases.
Currently, we have 36 sponsors sponsoring 56 young people. Five of the sponsees are new to our programme this year. One of the sponsors is Tony Abrahams who, because he was unsure how long he had to live, gave us the whole sponsorship payment for his child up front. We will continue drip-feeding his money in each year.
In September, our teacher trainer, Barbara Porter ran two one week seminars at the Lamdon Model Senior Secondary school, in Leh, Ladakh. The first seminar was intended for new participants who teach at primary level. The second seminar was intended for participants at primary level who had attended the course in 2009. In the event there was a mix of teachers from both the 2009 courses.
Barbara Porter demonstarting how puppets can be used for language teaching
The following details have been extracted from Barbara’s report:
Feedback
The feedback for both courses was very positive. In some notes written in addition to the end of course questionnaires (about what they would like to see in future courses) teachers spoke about how the training helped with all subjects, not just English, how they got a lot of new ideas, how they enjoyed the ‘entertaining and varied methods’ and finally from one of the secondary teachers ‘how it really helps me a lot in classroom teaching’…’boosts up my energy to teach more.’….’Even my students interest in learning aroused when I do the teaching by applying the method taught by Mrs Barbara Porter’ …….. it had proved challenging trying to cope with the wide range of teachers (in terms of the age range they taught) on the second course. My aim had been to try and ensure that as much as possible all participants were involved in something relevant to their own teaching the majority of the time. We had some useful discussions at lunchtimes about how to organise future follow-up seminars (see later section of report). I was glad to find from both these discussions and the end of course questionnaires that although they had been aware of the difficulties, overall they had found the seminar to be very useful and enjoyable.
Training room
As before the facilities at Lamdon were some of the best that I have experienced. I had the same large, bright and airy training room. A large blackboard was provided. I had my own portable tape recorder and speakers which was fortunate. For the first week I was not able to get a second tape recorder due to the frantic rehearsals going on for Parents Day. In addition the electricity supply is rather erratic so it is better to be self sufficient in this regard. For the first time ever the participants looked slightly askance at the cassette tapes I had made for each school with recordings of all the songs I was teaching. They muttered about copying them onto CDs and asked if I could bring CDs or DVDs next time. Therefore in future I think I should take CDs and take all recordings of songs and interviews on my iPod. The 21st century has arrived!
Photocopying/stationery
The school now has a photocopier and all necessary photocopying was done promptly by the school secretary Padma. Any additional stationery items that I needed (such as the files and exercise books for all the participants) I was able to buy in the town at a very good stationer.
Thoughts for the future
Future course content feedback.
I asked teachers to write some notes about what they would like to see in any future course. Main points:
• More speaking tasks
• More work on classroom management
• More presentation & demonstration
• More storytelling
• Grammar & writing skills
• Would like the levels to be separated (see above)
• More songs & games
• More help with lesson preparation.
Course content development
As I am not able to travel to the region in 2012 until the winter, I would hope to be able to have some time to undertake some further course development. My priorities would be:
• Further develop/expand in scope the section on classroom management.
• Transfer all songs and project interviews to CD/iPod.
• Further develop material for talks & presentations.
• Develop (in response to feedback) material for teaching grammar.
• Develop section on board games. (Popular but more needed).
• Develop full day of kindergarten activities
Follow-up course ideas
1. Teacher profiles/course length.
It seems really valuable to conduct second/follow up courses. All participants on the second course were delighted to attend again and eager to attend a third if possible. Following discussion with the participants and Eshey, I think it would be best if course participants were grouped according to the age range that they taught. I don’t think it would be a problem if there was a mix of folk who had attended before and folk who hadn’t. There would be an element of repetition for the ones who had been before (but that could work as consolidation anyway) and possibly new participants would miss out on some things that other folk on totally new courses would cover, but I would be careful to make sure that it was nothing that I consider to be fundamental. I don’t think it is really appropriate for the kindergarten teachers to be with the primary teachers. Because of their level of English this can be a real struggle for them. Even though it worked out positively in the end in Leh this year, I think the kindergarten teachers would benefit from a shorter time totally devoted to them. I would therefore suggest the following timetable (assuming that 2 courses are to be run and that teachers of all levels will be involved).
Week 1:
Primary Course 5 days
Kindergarten Course 1 day New tailor made course consisting entirely of appropriate games, rhymes, songs and simple storytelling activities.
Week 2
Secondary Course 6 days
I discussed this pattern with the teachers in Leh and they were very positive about the idea.
2. Micro-teaching
Practising in front of your colleagues
Eshey suggested that small groups of pupils could be drafted in so that the teachers could practise on small groups of students instead of each other. In the same way as I did this year, these micro lessons would be peer observed and discussed afterwards. Where appropriate student feedback could also be sought. I really like this idea and would like to use it elsewhere, not just in Leh where practical.
Once again special thanks to Lamdon School for hosting these seminars and looking after me so well. I was delighted to work there again and hope to be able to return in the future.
