Newsletters

Another year has passed. The completion of our 10 year anniversary last year marked an appropriate time to review our programme and re-orientate it where necessary. Barbara Porter, one of my fellow directors, has just returned from her first inspection visit:

Barbara with local teachers

Barbara Porter started out as a HELP volunteer in Sikkim and since then has run teacher training seminars in Kalimpong, Leh and Pokhara for local teachers.

She spent three weeks this autumn in Ladakh and Nepal visiting old contacts and the schools we have been supporting, meeting as many sponsored children as possible, ferreting out new schools that would benefit from our programme, and making new contacts.…

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It’s true! We’ve been around for 10 years helping children from poor families or none get an education in the Himalayas. It’s been a demanding but rewarding ten years. Our achievements are briefly recorded below. The fact that so much can be achieved by just one executive director in the U.K. (with advice from his fellow non-executive directors) and a handful of helpers in India and Nepal is testimony to the immense power of modern computing and the internet.…

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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.…

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Charitable status

Irene Beck and pupils

Gaining charitable status was probably the most significant event to take place this year. Until January 2007, when we became registered as a charity, HELP had been run as a not-for-profit company. Gratifyingly, the Charity Commission approved our application without requesting any change in the way we operate. We remain a limited company, but now with charitable status. I am pleased to report that I have recently received a cheque for £1,672 from Inland Revenue under the GiftAid scheme, which represents a tax refund on payments made since 2003 by our taxpaying UK benefactors.…

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