Our two new Children's Resource Centers in Pokhara are going very well. Kate is
teaching at the David's Falls Children's Resource Center and James is in Thulakhet.
Every day 40 to 60 Children are attending our centers. Our staff member Bishal
and office assistant volunteer Esther are heading to get all the information
about the resource center and take some interviews with host family, children
and community people. The Ganganagar Happy Home is progressing quickly and now we are
working to put on the roof and plaster the walls. We hope by the end of May we
will complete the building and start accepting the children from nearby the
village. The new Happy Home in Kathmandu is almost finished. Now we are working
on the painting both inside and outside along with some designs on the pillars.
We are very happy to see so many volunteers are coming through our Organization.
In May we will have 20 volunteers. Currently we have 30 facilities with room for 50 volunteers at a time and our staff
has gained lots of
experience to handle that amount of volunteers at a one time.
Rama, our Language teacher, was marriage recently and all of us at INFO would like
to give her a big CONGRATULATIONS!! and wish all the best for her life. I am
heading to the UK this month and will be back on 6th June. While I am in the UK
I will be having meetings with our partner Organizations and visiting our past
volunteers there. While I am away, Ryan Betters (6th time volunteering with us) will be working for me at the Office. We already have 5 children sponsored for
our Children's home and there are 8 people who has promised to sponsor our
children at Happy Home. We are very happy to see all of our planning going very
well and we are getting very positive response from our past volunteers about
our new children's resource centers and Happy Home.
I will be happy to see our UK volunteers while I am there and I will be using my
personal asim.naresh@gmail.com .
Best
Asim
Volunteer in Nepal - Teaching at Children's Resource
Center
Julia Lindsay - UK - March to May - 2007
Only two weeks in Parbatipur but it doesn't take long to feel at home there.
Host family were fantastic, wake up to fresh chiya and daal bhaat is on tap from
about 9am to 9pm. With Rama, your 'ama' you can learn to cook and generally have
a girlie gossip about the other villagers. She is extremely generous, especially
with her rice portions so just keep saying 'Pugyo!'Anything you need is just a
45minute bus ride away in Narangat.
Riding top-deck with the luggage is pretty normal, top up your tan and
avoid the goats and sweaty men coming back from the market. "Munchtime Café' is
a friendly place to go get some lunch with some Other volunteers; bring along
your own CDS to help them build up their music collection.
With the kids, do not worry about having no experience.they've been at school
all day and they are not expecting a structured lesson on English grammar. The
most important thing is that you divide the kids up, vaguely by ability. What
worked well for us was 7am and 8am classes of about 10 children in each who are
intermediate level. Then my 4 o' clock class were the ones with really limited
English so that class tended to be more art based and 5pm are the practically
fluent boys, a small group so we can race ahead.including my host brother, Sagar,
13 - very good English (very useful as an interpreter..he also brings you tea in
bed in the morning so lots of reasons to get along with him.)
Amelia and I also threw a huge party for the kids on a Saturday. Making
the food and the 'pinatas' took up a couple of classes and of course the kids
love getting messy.papier mache, balloons, glue.all allowed as long as they
clean up. We organized a sort of British style sports day with 'egg and spoon',
'sack', 'three-legged' races and had a fantastic day, divided into teams and
taking over the local field. You also have the challenge of shopping for all the
stuff in Narangat.try explaining brush cleaner, food colouring, blue tack, sack,
even string.to a shopkeeper in broken Nepali. Bringing a sample and then asking
'Tyo chha??" generally was the best
method.
This was the scramble for the sweets that came out the 'pinata'.we weren't
sure whether this game was fun or a little dangerous, but the amas and baas were
quite happy to watch their kids wrestling eachother- in the style of their
greatest heroes "Triple X", "John Cena" and "The Rock". Stock up on WWF stickers
for prizes in class and you'll win a few hearts.
Lisa and Amelia must take credit for this fantastic sign that we painted
with the older kids. Some of the adults gate crashed the painting sessions
and we found a secret artistic talent in a deaf villager, Manoj, who became a
great friend. Oh I do miss them all. It is a great place to be.a few words of
warning: get used to going to bed early because the music shop starts pumping
Nepali hits at 5 50am.also, beware of the switch in the shower (a little shock
to wake you up in the morning). Lastly get your dancing shoes on as there's not
one person in the village who won't ask you to dance for them.it seems to be the
universal language.a personal favourite - "chiya barimaa"!
Enjoy and enjoy and any questions, queries please give me an email -
giulialindsay@hotmail.com
Great success - mix up some salt dough
2 cups of flour (atta)
1 cup of salt (nune)
1 cup of water (pani)
Drop of food colouring (which I left in the cupboard in the room)
Everyone loves it! And whatever happens on your placement, it's always a fun to
get back to the
Happy Home kids, for more daal bhaat and a good dance with Bicky and the
boys.
Miss them all already!
REPORT OF PLACEMEN - VOLUNTEER IN NEPAL Rob (UK) and Elena (Spain) –
Goljung Children's Resource Center - 14th March
– 14th April 2007
We got a very warm welcome the first day we arrived with a meal at a local
restaurant. It was very nice to meet Asim’s wife and son and also to catch a few
other volunteers who were just finishing their placements and were leaving
Nepal. They gave us some useful tips on what to expect, what not to expect (!)
and how to deal with everything.The next couple of days were sightseeing, with a
few different members of the Info Nepal team, to various different places around
Kathmandu. Pratik and Bicky were great with their knowledge of every little
detail and we got a very good starter in understanding a lot of Nepali
culture.After that the language classes started with Rama. She would meet us
every day, normally in the mornings, for about 2 hours. We started off very
basically with “hello’s”, “how are you’s” and basic introductions, but very
rapidly over the 5 days of lessons, progressed to “how to barter for the best
price”, “likes and dislikes”, “food and drink” and much much more.
During this time we visited our training village family for two nights which was
a really good insight into what to expect from the actual placement. At first we
both felt a little uncomfortable as our Nepalese was still a little shaky and
the family’s English wasn’t that good. Also as they were such good hosts they
would not let us help with any jobs and as this wasn’t our placement there was
nothing for us to be getting on with immediately. However, the more we chatted
and spent time with them, the more we felt at ease and welcomed and in the end
we were very sad to be leaving so soon!
Next came the project in Goljung and our first real shock. By this time our
Nepalese was coming on a little better and we were feeling more confident to get
stuck into communication……only to find that in the village very few people spoke
Nepalese! Goljung is a Tamang village and they have their own dialect. Our host
family spoke Nepalese so this was not a problem but when we got to the library
on the first day, we found that very few of the children understood our Nepalese
or our English. We did find that some children spoke better Nepalese and English
than the others and so they became our invaluable translators for all lessons.
We have thought about how this problem could have been avoided and have realized
that it would have been impossible for the staff in Kathmandu to have taught us
any Tamang as this isn’t their language. The only thing we can suggest is that
future volunteers could be given a little more warning of the language
difference and perhaps a small booklet with some basic Tamang expressions and
useful phrases could be prepared for volunteers going to that placement.
Our work in the placement differed from what we had been expecting to do. Elena
had been planning to spend most days working with a health centre in the village
but found that it only opened one day while we were there, and I had planned to
assist with some construction but found no projects/work to help with. Having
said this we both had a fantastic time opening the library twice a day and
teaching the children. We tried to impart some of our joint professional medical
knowledge onto these lessons rather than just straight English. We introduced
basics of self-hygiene, basic treatment of minor wounds, ideas about infection
and cleanliness. These we felt went down very well and were absorbed by some of
the children.
After our project and for a two days in the middle we took ourselves away to do
some trekking in the local area and were rewarded by spectacular views and great
mountain experiences.
On the whole we both feel strongly that Info Nepal is a fantastic organization
and is doing a great job in trying to improve the quality of life of poorer
people in Nepal. One thing we did notice was that there are very many villages
which now have Info Nepal Libraries but these only open when Volunteers are
present. This we feel can lead to a lack of continuity of learning for the
children in those places. Two ideas we had of how to solve this problem were:
1) - A system of handover from one volunteer leaving a project to the next one
arriving at the same place.
Ideally this could be done if they overlap their time at the project or meet in
Kathmandu but obviously this will rarely happen. The best other way would be to
start a formal handover book to detail, for example, times of opening of the
library, lessons taught, levels of attentions and speed of learning of specific
children etc etc. We detailed much of this is our report in the logbook already
in the library in Goljung but perhaps it would be better to have a centrally
held one in the office in Kathmandu so that observation can be made about
progress in the different projects and comparisons made.
2) – A system of involvement of a local resident to open the library.
There a several obstacles to overcome with this idea. The local person must be
trusted with a key and given responsibility for maintaining the library in a
good condition. The local person would need to be paid for this. However, the
benefits of allowing the children regular access to resources held in the
libraries, even it were only for a piece of paper and a pen to write and
practice English, would be great.
If we have any other ideas that come to us we will definitely get in contact
with you to pass them on. We will also get on thew internet at some point in the
near future and write some reports on the chat rooms etc about the work that
Info Nepal does – in both English and Spanish!!!
Thanks again Info Nepal for giving us such a special experience. One that will
stay with us for the rest of our lives…..or until we are next back again with
you!!
Rob – jones_2k@hotmail.com
Elena elenagilz@hotmail.com
Amelia Carter - USA
- Teaching at Children's Resource Center - April 15th
2007
Email : ameliamcarter@yahoo.com
Coming to
Nepal
has been a mind-blowing experience and absolutely incredible in every way
shape and form. The people are the warmest I have ever met, the culture is
the richest I have ever had the opportunity to observe, and the environment
is more beautiful then I could have ever dreamed.
When I first arrived to
Nepal
I had a really rough start. The culture shock, among other unfortunate
mishaps, hit me in ways that I could have never imagined. But I soon
realized that this is to be expected when traveling to a developing country
for the first time. I promise though, once you fully understand and embrace
the Nepali saying, "Ke garne", everything will some how work itself out and
you will be able to enjoy
Nepal
for the remarkable place it is.
To speak on the volunteer work, it was wonderful. I worked at the library in
beautiful Parbatipur, Chitwan. The children were brilliant; they were so
anxious to learn and frankly just excited to be in the library. My first
four weeks I taught with another volunteer, Lisa. We mostly introduced new
vocabulary words and played games. They LOVE board bingo and memory so,
between the two, the 4 hour-long classes seemed to fly by.
The lack of teaching guidelines and my lack of teaching experience left me
to improvise most of the classes and while the kids seemed content I was
left a little unsatisfied with my teaching job. So Lisa's last week and
Guilia's first (the new volunteer), we basically turned the library into an
arts and crafts center and incorporated vocabulary with each new arts and
crafts activity. Then I started two huge projects, which I would have never
had the guts or ability to pull off without Guilia --she was an absolute
savior (thank you Guilia, you are amazing!). The first was a mural/sign
(which our host mother donated to us!) for the library that we had the kids
co-design and Lisa drew a beautiful outline for. Guilia and I helped paint
the poster with the older kids while the younger kids painted a watercolor
version on a giant piece of paper. We completed this project while
simultaneously planning for a huge party/field day for the kids. For the
party we had the kids make decorations and four Pinata's (which was
hilarious since Guilia and I barley knew what we were doing ourselves). Then
Guilia and I made a huge feast for the kids to enjoy after they played
racing games in a near by field. To make a long story short: one Pinata at a
time for 40 kids is NOT a good idea, but no one seemed to mind so, in the
end the whole thing was a huge success and the sign turned out beautifully!
After the hectic (but fun) last week was finally finished it was harder then
ever to say goodbye. As a result I left in true Nepali fashion: hysterically
crying with many small children sobbing, "Best of luck sister!" as my bus
pulled out of Parbatipur all too soon.
All of my host families (and all of their neighbors, friends and relatives I
had the opportunity to meet along the way) were spectacular. They all took
such good care of me and were so generous with anything that they were able
to give. My host family in Dhulikhel was great-- I got very close to the
Katri children. The family's kindness was immense. They gave me so much love
and care and constantly went beyond their call of duty. A special thank you
to Pashupati -- an exceptional tour guide and wonderful friend. My family in
Parbatipur was also incredible. Rama was so funny and warm and her
daughters, son, and niece were fabulous host relatives. They completely
welcomed me into their home and were so gracious while Guilia and I
destroyed their kitchen as we frantically cooked for 40 hungry kids-and
their parents. By the end of my stay I truly felt that I had made two
extended families in
Nepal
- whom I certainly will try to keep up a relationship with.
Nepal
was an unbelievable learning and life experience. I made extremely close
connections with people I would have never had the opportunity to even meet.
And I most certainly experienced the real
Nepal
thanks to INFO. Volunteering and/or staying with local host families are, I
feel, the only ways to truly soak up all that
Nepal
has to offer and I highly recommend it. In the end I can say that my time
spent in
Nepal
was fabulous! And it's damn hard to leave it behind; that's why I must say "Pheri
Bhetaula!" -- and to prospective volunteers remember the experience is what
you make it. PS. I'd be more then happy to elaborate on my experiences or answer any
questions.
ameliamcarter@yahoo.com
This was an amazing month, so many different things to experience and learn.
This trip has definitely surpassed my expectations, Ya'll have been so helpful
and friendly
Every day 40 to 60 Children are attending our centers. Our staff member Bishal
and office assistant volunteer Esther are heading to get all the information
about the resource center and take some interviews with host family, children
and community people. The Ganganagar Happy Home is progressing quickly and now we are
working to put on the roof and plaster the walls. We hope by the end of May we
will complete the building and start accepting the children from nearby the
village. The new Happy Home in Kathmandu is almost finished. Now we are working
on the painting both inside and outside along with some designs on the pillars.
