Dear Carolyn
Thanks for your curiosity.
I have read in the different sources about the charity eco tourism in the different place of the world. In it the tourists visit the places and also donate just a little for the children's education.
The same thing also happened in Sankhuwasabah. The some tourists who came to visit Sankhuwwasbah, sponsored some children liked by them for their education through. through SESF

Some tourist also donated a little money for SESF general fond

But unfortunately, when the conflict between the Maoist and the government started in Nepal, number of the tourists visiting the district was reduced very much.

Now peace has been restored in the country. Sankhuwasabha is far from the problem of the bus strike. It is very peaceful. There is no labor strike. There is no problem of the electricity. So we hope to have 5000 tourists visiting the district in the coming year.

SESF hopes the tourists visiting the district will do on line donation to SESF account. In order to facilitate the donation SESF which will try to open a bank account in Alyssa's name in the USA or in SESF name in Kathmandu. The will be appealed to donalte just a little for SESF.

The money will go for the educations of the poorest children as decided by SESF scholarship committee. Some part of the money will be spent on the orphan children of the Khandbari Orphanage
The blogsite designed by me is as follows for the orphanage is

www.sankhuwasabah.blogspot.com

I would like to share my thought with all the neighbours.

Tejanatjh

Khadbari

Hello Tejanath- hope you are well! Thanks for your post. My next question is- have you thought about how you will "market" this idea to tourists who come to Sankhuwasabha? If I am a tourist treking through the region, what would compell me to give SESF money or even sponsor a child? Will I be visiting the school or orphanage as part of my travel? How else will I know that SESF is trying to collect donations? Will there be a brochure in the motel, bed&brekafast? How will you advertise to me that there is this option for me to donate?
Carolyn

Hi there,
As Carolyn stated when you just ask tourists to donate money they would like to see where there money is going to. You could develop excursions to SESF (but it would be disruptive if there are a lot of tourists coming around)or maybe you can create an leaflet about SESF or a photo exposition in a central place.
An other possibility is to add an addiotional $1 dollar or more ($1 dollar is a small amount) on the prices of the tourist activities you wan't to create. I think when you still keep it cheap but add a little bit of money on top of excursions, trekkings etc. you can advertise about being an eco-tourism business which is contributing to SESF and/or other local initiatives.
But I think this is a possibility we need to think about in a later phase of the tourism development process in Sankhuwasaba.
--
Warm regards, Lotte

Dear Caroly and Lotte
Thanks for your very good questions. Since its establishment SESF has been supporting the children to go school thorough individual sponsorship program as well as scholarship program. Under the individual sponsorship program we were able to get the poorest children sponsored by different foreign individuals . The Peace Corpse Volunteers coming to stay in Khasndbari for official work or tourist trekking to Mt.Makalu Base Camp sponsored children through SESF. During the period some tourists also donated money for SESF general fund. As a resold SESF was able to collect about abot 500000(USD 7000) Out of the total fund we have put Rs. 400000 in local money lender sand in 25 % interest and running the SESF with inters.
But because of the conflict in Nepal between the government and the Maoist the tourism our SESF program was also disturbed. But now the situation has been changed in Nepal. Sankhuwasabah has become one of the most peaceful district within few load shedding and full of tourism potentialities.

Last year Mr. Andrew Blake from UK , a Nabuur volunteer, came o visit in Khandbari, He lived in a Arati hotel Khandbari for three night and four days . He paid Rs. Rs. 3500 (USD 50) for the period for food and lodge. Then He came o my house and lived and ate with my family. He had Dal Bahat (Nerpali food) without paying any thins to my family as a our guests. During his stay in Khandbari He visited a special school for the deaf and mute children. He was very much impressed by the children and distributed stationery and vest for the 13 children it cost about Rs2000 for him.
In a meeting with the political leaders of the distinct he emphasized about the eco tourism, to keep the tourists at homes not in the expensive hotels or camp, to get youths of this area involved as tourist guides so that the local people are much benefited from the tourism. The guides who are very much familiar about the people and the places of the area would take the tourist to show temple, monasteries, orphanage historical sites.
For this he had emphasized the importance of information though website.. And So we developed the website www.sankhuwasabah.com to help support eco tourism in Sankhuwasabah.

Since SESF has been supporting the children it is clear that SESF has been collecting some donations from the local people as well as from the tourist. SESF's activities are open and transparent. It distributes the scholarship openly in an special function arranged the Himalaya Higher Secondary School Khandbari.Its report is sent to the to donors and sponsors.
In coordination other organizations SESF will try to develop brochures for the tourist to guide know about the different places and will distribute the tourists.

I hope to share our experience about it with other neighbors. I also hope some Nabuur volunteers will come to visit Sankhuwasabah and will experience their visiting and suggest us in the future.
Best Regards.
Tejanath pokharel
Khandbari

I spoke with Tejanath yesterday and he provided a few updates that I felt were worth noting here;

1. The shopkeepers in Khandbari have been considering shops for tourists, or how to address the needs of tourists in the area.

2. The youth clubs are very interested in tourists coming to Khandbari. The Rural office is interested in providing training young people to be tourist guides. The youth see this as a potential source of income.

3. Three volunteers from the USA have recently gone to the local base camp for trekking.

Still no word on the registration yet. It has been submitted. Tejanath says that it will take time. We spent some time talking about whether or not the local infrastructure is in place to support larger tourist groups who may come to do charitable work in the area. This is something that we will need to explore further.

I talked with Andrew a bit about the existing facilities. He said that the camps are basic and effective for hardened trekkers. He was able to put Tejanath in touch with an organization in Kathmandu that was recently started that does group tours for some guidance. I also met the director of a tour company based in Kathmandu via Twitter and have put him in touch with Tejanath as well for additional guidance.

Jennifer

Dear Neoghbours

I ma very much pleased to inform you all that our 17th District Council has recently passed a proposal t to form a District Level Tourism Council as proposed by STC. I hope in the next meeting of the Distrct Development committee a full powerful district Level Tourism council will be formed.

i will write you all about it soon.

Tejanath

Hi Tejanath- that's great news! Pleased to hear this has finally ocurred.
Carolyn

That's great news Tejanath! I'm so happy to hear that happened quickly. Hope to talk with you further this weekend.

Jennifer

Hi Tejanath, that is good news! Thumbs up and fingers crossed.

Jenny

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

धेरै धेरै बधाई तेजनाथ ज्यू!

Bobby

--
The first step is the hardest. What follows is an adventure and where you end is all up to you. Take that step.

Great news that you founded an Tourism Council, Congratulations! I’m a curious about what you did discuss in the council and if there are any new tasks we can work on to help you and the Council develop the eco-tourism project.
Is everything OK in your region? Jennifer posted a message about violence and riots near Sankhuwasabha.
I was also wondering if you did already think about the penpal function on your website. I still think it’s a bit dangerous , especially for girls, who can get involved in violence, abuse, rape and abduction when they get in contact with the wrong person.

--
Warm regards, Lotte

Hi Lotte-

Good to hear from you. I emailed Tejanath yesterday, but so far don't have a response back from him. I did see him online briefly yesterday, but we were not able to talk, so I have no updates on the situation on the ground.

As far as I know, the council has not met since they were officially recognized due to the situation on the ground. All offices were closed. I know they hope to do that soon. Andrew, myself and Tejanath have been in communication with some trekking agencies based in Kathmandu and conversations with them so far are very supportive.

I agree regarding the pen pal section of the website. I do think this is dangerous unless very closely monitored. Tejanath and I have had discussions about this already.

I hope that we will be able to identify and develop tasks for this village soon, but Tejanath asked for a bit more time for the council to be formed and get focused on the work ahead of them. If you recall, there were some bad feelings about how the original council was formed, so I believe they plan on reforming the group and electing officers again to make sure that all involved feel the process has been a fair one.

If I hear from Tejanath I will post an update here so everyone knows that things are okay.

Jennifer

Dear Jennifer and Lotte

Thans for your curioisity about the STC. As far as STc is concerned Sankhuwasabah District Development has formed a policy to forrm District level Tourisn Coordination committee.

Because the Local Developer office is on leave it has not been formed yet. i hope it be formed soon

I will write more soon

Mu electrician wet off

Tejanaht

Greetings to all-

I had the opportunity to talk with Tejanath today. It was great to catch up and hear about how things are progressing in Khandbari with the tourism project. Tejanath indicated in his conversation with me that they are trying to devise a means for the childhood education project and the Arun Valley Children's Home to benefit from the trekkers coming through the area. They would like to learn more about Social Trekking.

This year 1300 tourists visited Sankhuwasabha, but of the 1300 who visited the district, only two of these tourists donated money and in-kind support to the orphanage. The local community would like to change these numbers so that more of the local organizations and business can benefit. Tejanath explained that his vision for this is to develop a social trekking business in Khandbari and register this business with the Social Trekking office in Kathmandu. Tejanath said that there is a local business man interested in this concept and he hopes that SESF can partner with them to provide guidance/insight as to where the greatest social need is in the local community. Tejanath envisions that if they can serve their guests well that the business would flourish and a portion of the profits could be donated to SESF who could then reinvest it into the children in the community.

Interestingly, the country of Nepal has decided to launch a national tourism campaign "Nepal Tourism Year 2011." You can learn more about that here: http://nepaltourismyear2011.nepalvisitors.com/ Tejanath believes that Sankhuwasabha could really benefit from this national campaign. They are hoping for around 5000 more tourists next year. The government has been promoting home stay and community based tourism in preparation for this campaign. Of note, the Nepal Tourism Board came to Khandbari and offered training to the tourism stakeholders. Tejanath was able to take part in the training as well.

Tejanath would like input on developing a business plan for a Social Trekking company.

All the best-

Jennifer

Hi everyone to add to Jennifer’s post, I wanted to let neighbours know that I have been working off-line with Tejanath to improve the tourism brochure. Whilst he used a version of this brochure late last year at a Trade Fair in Kathmandhu, I have agreed to revise and improve the brochure. It will be three brochures- each advertising different elements of tourism in the region.
The first one is complete in regards to the text- however I have been slowed down in the “publishing” aspect of it as I don’t have those kinds of creative skills. I am trying to insert it into an Apple Pages brochure template. If anyone would like to take over the design element of this then that would be great! Otherwise I will persevere.
The other two brochures are about the specific trek to Mt Makalu, as well as the Tea house trekking options. It is my intention that we print these brochures and have them distributed as widely as possible in Kathmandu where all trekkers usually start their journey. Placing them on the website will also be good. As will getting someone to translate them into French, German and Dutch (prolific trekkers!)
We have also made some general posts on the Lonely Planet blog- Thorn Tree to try and alert fellow travellers that the regions is also worth visiting and people do so!
I will keep you up to date
Carolyn