Min-

How many tiffin boxes and water bottles would we need if we could get one for each student at the school? Can you please price these and let me know the local cost? Also would you purchase these in Gamauli or Kathmandu? Would they be easy to transport to Gamauli if purchased in Kathmandu?

Jennifer

Dear Jennifer

Good morning

Wishing alln the best to all neighbours in Gamauli village

It's grateful action from yourside.

Recently, There are 180 students. 25 students drop out from school and some of them joined another school which is about one hour far from the community. since the student number decreased down.
Since we need about 200 water bottle and tiffin boxes at the same number.

It cannot be possible to buy at local level/ gamauli. Since it is better to buy in Kathmandu where I live and carry with me to the gamauli village then organize parents gathering with teachers and studnets. Then collect some commitments from parents that they will send food with their children and teachers will help to manage in school. Then I will come back and follow in coming days.

In Kathamndu, the medium sized water bottle and tiffin boxes can be priced, $4 dollars/set.

If possible, I hope some money to organize parents education workshop. 30 parents participate in that workshop and it will run for three days. I hope to privide snacks and stationary cost which is about $150.

sinceerly your/s
min/LR

Min and I were finally able to connect last night and spent about 2 hours talking about our project. I want to share some of our conversation with you in hopes that it will help you learn more about the people of Gamauli and some of the overall needs at the school:

1. Min had the opportunity to meet with some of the staff at the Mountain Fund last week. He shared a powerpoint presentation about the building project and believes that they were very receptive and will be able to provide volunteers to assist.

2. Today I added a new task for writing a proposal to purchase 200 Tiffin Boxes and Water bottles to be distrubuted to the students at the school in Gamauli. Min and I had talked about this previously because there is no water source closeby the school where students can access clean water. If students do not bring this with them to school, or do not bring enough, some of them cannot stay for a full day of classes. Min believes that if the school can provide them with both of these items that this will allow them to remain in class for a full day. Min believes that ECC, the organization that he works for can provide for transportation of these items from Kathmandu. The boxes and water bottles cannot be purchased locally in Gamauli, so they will need to be transported.

3. Min explained that the organization, ECC, does not do any fundraising. They are entirely supported by contributions of its members. 3 of the members have paid employment and the rest are students.

4. I asked Min to explain more about Gamauli to me. He told me that Gamauli is located in a very rural part of Nepal with lots of hills. The people are primarily farmers by trade and are considered to be in the lowest caste in Nepal. There are about 200 households and a total of 1500 people in Gamauli. The majority of the people are illiterate. There is a high birth rate and girls marry around the age of 15 or 16 years. The life expectancy in Gamauli is around 45 years of age. The primary farm crops are maize, wheat and millet. Rice is also grown in some places. Some farms have cows. There are few chickens and there is no fishing in the area. This year, there has been very little rain, which has impacted the crops and Min tells me many of the people are hungry as a result. There is no irrigation used at the farms because there is no river nearby. Even clean drinking water is at times difficult to get.

5. At the school there is a prescribed government endorsed curriculum for the students. The school is allowed to add and offer other types of classes to this curriculum, so for example, if they wanted to provide some type of vocational skills training they could do that, but unfortunately they do not have enough teachers. Min provided training to the teachers in Gamauli to get them started. One teacher was able to go to the district headquarters and receive training provided by the government in Kathmandu. This training was long, but it did not provide for any follow-up or refresher training. At the present time, there are 4 teachers at the school. A Nabuur volunteer-Gary, provides for the salary of two teachers and another is supported by the government of Nepal. Min provides financial support to the other teacher who is from the local community. Only one of these teachers has received formal training. Min would like to bring all of them to Kathmandu for 10-days so that they can visit model schools there and receive more training to improve their teaching skills. He would be able to manage rooms for them for free and estimates the cost of a 10-day stay with training at around $500 per teacher (this was a rough estimate). The school year in Nepal runs from April-March of the following year. There are two 45-day breaks from the time the school year ends in March until it starts again in April and another that begins in September and ends in October. This would be the best time to bring the teachers to Kathmandu for training.

6. I asked Min about winter in Gamauli. He explained that it is very cold and dry with little rainfall. The school does not have electricity or heat. It is warmed from the sun in winter. The children wear simple clothes which may not be warm enough in the cold winter months. A few children have warmer clothes-Min describes these children as "rich." School uniforms are mandatory at the school, but few children can afford them. The uniform consists of a sky blue shirt and dark blue pants or a dark blue skirt for girls. There is a local tailor in Gamauli. Students are not turned away from the school if they cannot afford a uniform. The children often come to school with no shoes and no school bags. A bag is also mandatory, but most children are without them because they cannot afford to buy one. These are useful so that they do no lose their school papers, books and other supplies on their way to/from the school.

7. The last thing that we talked about was fundraising. Min explained that he has a 30-minute movie on DVD about the reality of rural schooling in Nepal. The first part focuses on Gamauli and the end shows what can be done with better education. Min would like to travel to Australia to show this movie and arrange for some speaking engagements there in an effort to raise funds for the school. He is able to arrange for transportation to Australia if we can assist him with finding organizations and other contacts in Australia who may be interested in partnering with the project and able to set something up for him to make a presentation. He would like to use this as an opportunity to establish a network of people who can provide assistance for the school into the future.

I hope this lengthy update provides you with additional insight into Gamauli, the needs of the children at the school and inspiration to help us move the project forward.

Warm Regards-

Jennifer :)

Dear Jennifer and other neighbours

We the people of Gamauli and especially the children and parents of this school are grateful to all neighbours especially to Jennifer that for her hard working to bringing out the real situation of the village and thinking about the long lasting activities for that school.

Really, there are many problems which we cannot address at the same time and we cannot see the result in education without addressing these problems in average. Since ECC (the non governemnt organization) is working is different areas like parent awareness monitoring, training and others. But the major things are drop out, faliure, readmision, and others. The reasons behand it were student do not stay full day in the school, they do not have water, day meal, no bag, no sufficient stationary, no toilets and others. Here we think another question that "can we support these all things from outside and is it possible for ever?"

I believe that we can do these thingas in partnership with parents and we need to continue for somewhile then they can cancontinue when they feel it as their first need. When parent start some income generation activities then they can support in effective ways to their children.

Since I myself request to all neighbours to help to develop stronger relationship with any one of the school or community in foreign countries like Austrelia, Canada, USA and others.

In case of movie, Here ECC can share transportation, that we can go and organize some shows as well as speaking program in Astrelia then we can rise fund for improving the facilities in that school and it may be the long term relation with some organization.

Then we can meet our goal " community owned/community managed school with child centered environment". Then the school will be the common representative organization of that community. Finally this module can be duplicate in other villages.

Sincerely your's
Min/LR

Hi everyone-

I just wanted to update on a few developments this week:

1. I was contacted again by Hannah from the Colored Pencil Project (www.thecoloredpencilproject.org). She is presently in India and informed us that she is interested in considering a visit to Nepal for their 2009 project. I have talked further with Min and emailed her additional information about the project and schools in the area of Gamauli. She said they like to target places they can reach 800-1000 children. Min feels this is something that can be done. He has also offered his services as an interpretor. This is not a definite committment at this point, but certainly a step in the right direction.

2. Sara has worked on and submitted a project proposal for Empower Nepal for the Tiffin Boxes and Water Bottles. Min and I will be chatting further with Sara on Monday to make any final changes to the proposal before getting it submitted. Sara has some great ideas to help the school and great experience in the education system here in the United States, so I am very excited to have her offer her skills/expertise to this project.

3. Min and Jerammy have been collaborating about the powerpoint presentation. We still could use assistance from our volunteers in identifying venues where Min may be able to show the film and present the powerpoint presentation in an effort to fundraise.

Warm Regards-

Jennifer

Hi everyone-

I know things have gotten quiet over the last few weeks, but things are still moving along and discussions have been happening via email. I received the following email today from Min and wanted to share it because I think it provides a good outline of his plan for this project to help Gamauli school:

"Dear Jennifer,

Krishna Primary School, Gamauli is a governent community school located in remote area from the capital city Kathamndu and from the district headquarter Dailekh. In the beginning, comunity people started it and governent supported with a teacher. This school has two major problems right now;

One is, very poor physical facilities in the school (lack of reading rooms, no library room, no drinking water,

no toilet, no compound wall and no sufficient playing ground)
Second is, school is not owned by community people and parents and they are not able to provide necessary suport to their children (stationary, books, uniform, warm cloths, day meal etc.)
Here my mission is, "to help improving physical facilities as well as make aware and empower the community people that they can lead the school from local level"

My primary list of action that we can meet the above mission is,

work on classroom, library, compound wall, drinking water and toilet
train teacher small supports (staionary, reading materials and warm cloths...)
Conduct awareness rising classes as well as income Generation program for the community people
Then after three years community can lead the school and can be a model school in the district.

My major focus is to rise fund for the certain program.

I will write you if I will able to contact to Sabina.

Sincerely your's
min"

One thing we are thinking about is if there might be a way we can work with the Yoshinkel project to accomplish getting some warmer clothes made for the children that would allow both projects to benefit. I'm not sure if it will work, but I've contacted their facilitator to see if we can put our heads together and figure out a way. If not, we'll continue looking at other means.

Min and I will be talking hopefully again soon-so I'll update as I have more information.

Warm Regards-

Jennifer

Min and I were able to talk this morning for quite awhile, so I wanted to post an update on the most recent project developments:

1. There is a volunteer on the ground from the USA who will be staying with Min for the next 6 months. She is working with him on visiting various schools, proposal writing and is currently working on developing a website for the Education Concern Center (ECC). She will be traveling with Min in the next few weeks to visit Krishna Primary School. I have asked her to provide me with her views on what she observes at the school once they return. I am certain Min will have an update as well, but I am eager to hear her observations as well.

2. Min is planning a trip to Krishna Primary School in about 3 weeks. He hopes to gather some donations for winter clothing to bring with him for needy students at the school. I have posted another update about trying to partner with the Yoshinkel project to address this need as well. Min tells me that winter season lasts until April in Nepal, so there will still be time to get items to the children if the women in Yoshinkel can complete some items for them. Please see the task about winter clothing for more details.

3. Min will be bringing his digital camera with him on the trip. I have asked him to take updated pictures of the school and current conditions. He is also hoping to incorporate these into a fundraising presentation. Jerramy is still working on a powerpoint for use with the film that Min hopes to show as part of his presentation. We're waiting on updated pictures and some more statistics from Min to get this finished up. I emailed Jerramy some additional information today.

4. A kind volunteer who has been supporting the salaries for the teachers for several years contacted me this week to express interest in funding a portion of the building project-maybe one classroom or possibly building improved toilets. Min would like to focus on the classroom, so he is working on gathering more specific information for him to try to make this a reality.

5. I have asked Min to consider leading strategic planning during his visit to the school with the teachers, parent's committee and local community members. He also indicated that he felt this would be a good idea to help map out both long-term and short-term goals for the project, as well as provide an idea of the level of funding needed. I will be sending him more information on how to do this, so again hopefully this is something we will be able to share with you once he returns from his visit to the school. Min understands that Nabuur is not a good place to focus on large-scale funding, so we talked about how a more specific plan would be helpful also in identifying issues that we CAN work on here at Nabuur.

6. You will notice that I have posted several new tasks today. The research based tasks are intended at the moment to help Min consider the best options possible for addressing some of the major issues at Krishna Primary School in his strategic planning document. These are located in Step 2. Step 1 contains some of the most immediate needs of the school and things we may be able to impact through the work of our volunteers here at Nabuur. Funding issues have been moved under Step 3.

7. The proposal for the tiffin boxes and water bottles is written-many thanks to Sara for her great contribution. After rethinking this task, Min and I have decided to hold off on submitting it in favor of adjusting it for something that can show greater long-term sustainability. While we do believe that the tiffin boxes and water bottles would be utilized, after rethinking it, we felt this request addresses a temporary need and that it would be much better to make adjustments and submit with a request to address for example, the overall access to water at the school. This will be much easier to do thanks to Sara's hard work and I do expect we will submit the proposal with adjustments as we learn more about the best options available for the school. Min and I are both very grateful for Sara's work to get us started.

I think that's it for now! I'm fairly certain that I've remembered everything, if not I'll post again later. Thank you everyone for your patience. This is a large project and there are so many needs at the school it has sometimes been very difficult to define the best way for Nabuur volunteers to help. After talking with Min today, I feel much better and feel that we're back on track and in a good place.

Kind regards-

Jennifer

Min-

I came across this organization tonight and thought it was worth mentioning to you. Take a look through their website and let me know if you think it might be worthwhile to register the project with them and get more volunteers to come to Nepal to help the school.

http://kidsworldwide.org/affiliate.htm

Jennifer

Dear Jennifer

Thans for sending information about this website. I sent an email to ths KIDs worldwide. I am waiting their reply.

Sincerely your's
min

Dear Jennifer

We are really grateful to your hard working for this community/school. when I visit gamauli website then I see your write ups everywhere. then I feel that how you are able to update these things. I/we are relly hopeful to meet our goal.

Sincerely your's
min

Hi everyone-

I was able to talk briefly with Min this morning. He is still in Dailekh and will be returning to Kathmandu maybe tomorrow. He had exciting news about access to water at the school. Apparently during his trip, he was able to visit a local market and talked with them about providing water to the school between the hours of 10 AM-4 PM. They agreed to do this for free. He will post more information as soon as he returns, but I thought that was an exciting development.

I asked Min to have another look at the building budget. As you know, we have a donor willing to provide funds for 1 of the two classrooms if we can secure funding for the other. I want to get a more exact idea of how much we would need to raise and then begin submitting some proposals requesting assistance with the rest of the funds. Having someone willing to stand behind the school with funding already should be very beneficial and work in our favor. Min is going to look at this again when he gets back.

I don't have much to update on now, but wanted you to know those two things for now. I'm sure once Min returns home he'll have more to tell you.

Have a good weekend!

Jennifer

Dear Jennifer and all other neighbors

I just returned back from Gamauli visit. I am writing report and details of drinking water project as well as building project inn Gamauli. I most appreciate all of you for your kind contribution for woolan caps and other supports. At the same time we hope further supports for these children.

Sincerely your's
min

Min has been able to secure assistance for the construction of a new toilet at the school. He approached a local NGO and made an agreement with them for a 60/30/10 percent financial contribution-NGO (60), ECC (30) and local community (10). Min estimates that around $500 USD will be needed for ECC to meet the contribution they agreed to. I am expecting an itemized budget for that project from Min soon.

Regarding the two classrooms, Min and I are working on revising and updating the proposal to Empower Nepal. I have asked Rachel to assist us as well. That is in progress and should be completed soon.

Jennifer

Dear Jennifer and other neighbours

Warm Well come to Rechal!!

We thanks to all friends and good wishers that we are achieving most of goals right now. We are able to get fund for water project and also budget for toilet. The only small part of budget for toilet is need to raise from ECC's side. And we are getting big oppoutunity for teacher training and empowerment program.

On behlaf of Gamauli peoople, we are always grateful to Jennifer for her great work/contribution. and thank to all neighbour for their contribution.

Here I request to all neighbour for building with two rooms. Please join evryones hand and contribute one hour per day then we will be able to achieve our goal easier and faster.

Sincerely your's
Min/LR

Hi everyone-hope that you are all having a good weekend. I just wanted to let you know that Min left early this morning for Gamauli and will be visiting for 1-week. He hopes to get the construction on the new toilets started. He was able to collect some books to bring with him for the students and plans to set up a chest with the books inside for a "reading corner" in the existing school building.

We hope to have new pictures of the progress to show you soon.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Jennifer