Volunteer news

After two years when we were unable to send any volunteers to any of our partner schools, it was a delight to be able to send four this autumn. Applications were slow to come in at the beginning of the year as travel restrictions remained in place until early summer,  but by September we were able to send our first volunteer, Ken Haigh from Canada, to the Vidya Sagar Gyanpeeth school in West Sikkim.

Ken is an experienced teacher and librarian and as with most of our volunteers found it a challenging as well as a rewarding experience : “I was looking for a challenge and it was certainly challenging.…

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The Sikkim government has closed all schools. Our two volunteers are having to abandon their assignments. These are difficult and worrying times for all of us.…

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HELP volunteer,Kathleen Kressly, with her school children in West Bengal (Kalimpong). We are looking for more volunteers like her to join our programme and make a difference to the education of children in the Indian and Nepalese Himalayas! If you want to know more, please go to the volunteer page of our website.

So far this year we have had four volunteers on assignments in India and Nepal. One of these is a doctor based in a clinic in Western Nepal. The others have been teachers, three of whom are still in place. Two more will take up their assignments later this year. Encouragingly, next year is already looking good for volunteer recruitment. At the moment we already have six who are likely to join up even if they haven’t already.…

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Brinda Poornapragna has recently completed her HELP assignment at an Ashram school in the Tehri district of the Indian state of Uttarakhand and has submitted this item for our blog:

Nestled in the native hills of the Ganges … is an NGO which supports the cause of Girls / Women Education…

The NGO itself was established about 40 years ago and is very illustrious and well known in the region for its service to the cause and impeccable devotion to the cause.…

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by BARBARA PORTER (Director Volunteer Programme)

Volunteering abroad in the Himalayas is an experience not to be missed! ☆ “Want to teach in the Himalayas?” This was the top result following an internet search for short term volunteer teaching opportunities abroad. Who could resist such an invitation? For anyone with a thirst for exciting travel, the Himalayas are an irresistible location, the stuff of legend and mystery.

Still relatively inaccessible, the difficulties getting there make travel and volunteering in the region seem all the more exciting and rewarding.

Summer is coming – the ideal time to volunteer in Ladakh! While the monsoon drenches the rest of India (and Nepal), Ladakh remains warm and dry.

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We currently have volunteers at a village school in south Sikkim and an ashram school in Uttarakhand (Sikkim and Uttarakhand are Indian states). We are looking for volunteers to teach English in similar schools in Nepal!.

This is what Jeremy LeafIoor in Sikkim has reported in a recent email: “It has been wonderful so far. The kids are definitely a challenge some days. I really struggled week two, things have since gotten better. I’m hoping the kids are learning as much as I am.…

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By Marco Saaltink

In only four years time, I’ve noted a remarkable change in Nepal, most interestingly in education. At the end of 2014, a public school where I was volunteering—in the village of Changu Narayan, nearby the city of Bhaktapur—was planning to expand from grade 7 to grade 8. But now, only four years later, the highest level is grade 5. The student numbers have halved, at least. According to a local friend, this is due to more and more parents being able to afford to send their children by school bus to private schools.…

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