We’ve recently returned from a month’s inspection visit that included a memorable 12 hour jeep drive in Sikkim to visit one school and two sponsored children, which was not exactly a very productive use of our time! But the school (the Vidya Sagar Gyanpeeth school) had to be visited since a new building is being constructed there with money donated to us, and there was also a volunteer teacher in residence at the time.

In Bhutan I was able to discuss not only the forthcoming teacher development seminar in Thimpu, to be hosted by the Druk school, but also to introduce our volunteer programme to three state schools serving the poorer members of Thimpu society.

The rest of the trip was spent visiting schools and projects, and meeting sponsored children and HELP contacts in West Bengal and Nepal. Two of the schools we support in the western region of Nepal require a trek to get there - and so I combined a holiday trek to the Annapurna base camp with a visit to the two schools in Chitre and Phalate. In Pokhara, the capital of the western region, I was lucky enough to be able to meet a volunteer waiting for the new school year to start in Chitre. She had tried out paragliding while she was waiting, and so I followed suit. Scary, but fun!

So all in all, in spite of that dreadful day in Sikkim, this was a successful inspection visit, renewing relationships with our contacts, taking HELP into Bhutan, and having some fun at the same time!

“A Guinness World Records team measured Chandra Bahadur Dangi at 54.60 centimetres, declaring the 72-year-old even shorter the previous titleholder, Junrey Balawing, from the Philippines, who stood at 23.5 inches at the age of 18 last year.

“The good news is that Chandra Bahadur Dangi is the world’s shortest living man,” Guinness Records editor-in-chief Craig Glenday told reporters after measurements were taken.

“If he is really 72 years old he is the oldest person to be awarded the shortestman record,” Glenday said, adding Dangi was also the shortest person ever measured by the Guinness World Records.

From a poor and uneducated family in a remote part of Nepal, Dangi said he had never heard of Mount Everest and was unaware of the world record title before a timber merchant visited his remote village last month and decided to measure him.

His diminutive size has since made him a celebrity in the impoverished nation of 26.6 million people and he took a plane for the first time last week to travel from his village, Rimkholi, 267 km west of Kathmandu, to meet the Guinness World Records officials in the capital.

“I am good. I feel happy,” Dangi said holding two framed certificates. “I want to travel around the world and spread the name of my country.”

Dangi, whose parents died when he was still in his teens, lives with his brother with, he said, has no desire to marry.”
© Copyright (c) The Province

“Guinness World Records officials will arrive in Nepal this weekend to measure a 72-year-old man who says he’s only 22 inches (56 centimeters) tall and hopes to be declared the world’s shortest man.

Chandra Bahadur Dangi is hoping to snatch the title of world’s shortest man from Junrey Balawing of the Philippines, who is 23.5 inches (60 centimeters) tall.

Guinness World Records said in an email Wednesday that the officials would arrive in Nepal’s capital, Katmandu, on Sunday to measure Dangi.

Dangi, who is from western Nepal, arrived in Katmandu by airplane on Wednesday.

“I am very happy to be in Katmandu for the first time in my life. I am here so I can take the Guinness title,” Dangi told reporters at Katmandu’s airport.

Dangi — who is about the size of a toddler — said it was his first trip outside his mountain village. It was also his first trip on a plane.
Chandra Bahadur Dangi

Dangi, who has never been married, lives with his eldest brother and his family in Rhimkholi village, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) west of Katmandu. Because of his height, he has never worked outside the house, doing only household chores. He has five brothers, all of average size.

His family is not sure when he stopped growing, and Dangi said he has never been checked by a medical doctor. He attended a few classes in the village school, but soon dropped out.

Dangi has a diet of mainly rice and vegetables, and occasionally eats meat products, but in small portions.

Since Dangi’s village is in a remote mountainous area, it was only recently that a forest contractor cutting timber in the village discovered him. The contractor and the family measured Dangi, and when they found out he was just 22 inches tall, the contractor informed local media of Dangi’s story.

Dangi’s nephew Dolak Dangi said that before the contractor’s visit, the family did not know his uncle’s exact height, and that he was shorter than the world’s shortest man.

Another Nepalese man, Khagendra Thapa Magar, was known as the world’s shortest man, at 26.4 inches (67 centimeters), before Balawing took over the title on his 18th birthday in June.

Aside from a Guinness certificate, the crown of world’s shortest man does not come with any cash award.”

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.

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

Keeping in touch

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

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.)

Here are a couple of pictures she sent us: