Collecting From The Heavens

Great news! Angela has raised $800 AUD (450 GBP) at a party sing in her home city of Adelaide. All proceeds have gone to supplying the water tanks and other materials needed, plus labour costs. So a real BIG thank you to Angela, her singing team and all those who participated and donated !!DHANYABAD!!

And Jolana, Mon and the guys in the village, and everyone else involved have done a great job in building guttering onto the school, and connecting a series of downpipes to the 2 tanks located at one end of the school.

The main reason for doing this was to take advantage of the large quantities of rainfall during the monsoon. This water can then be used for cleaning hands and dishes, and even filtered for drinking water.

We will update you after the monsoon to see how successful it has been!

Planting in School

Jolana picked some plants from a local person in Bandipur - the plant name is the "12 O'clock" plant, and has beautiful purple flowers. She then arrived to a sanitation day going on in the school, and has taken many of these plants to give to the children in Aandhimul. The children were very excited to get planting them around the school grounds!

She had also received a plant from Tony Jones, the owner of the Old Inn Hotel in Bandipur, and from a Nepali friend Peepal Chautari. Who both said they will also give some more plants to the school! Thank You! Dhanyabad!

In the words of Jolana, "Time for HOPE - I hope - that we can create more harmony in this village form which much goodness may grow. That is my Wish!". And with all the hard work everyone's putting in, we're sure that wish can come true :)

In Kathmandu

Jolana needed to make a trip to Kathmandu to contact some NGOs and have a short break in India. However, at the time she left there was a massive strike throughout Nepal, shutting everything down, run by the Maoists. It lasted almost a week, and at some points people thought much violence might break out, and of course for Jolana and other tourists, they couldn't travel around the country. Also, most shops were closed, even tourist shops. Above shows some of the pictures Jolana captured during this strike. She was also lucky she met some wonderful Spanish people who let her stay with them.

School Update

Things are progressing well. The kitchen now has a gas cooker, so the children can finally eat a hot, nutritious soup made up from many cereals and pulses. As seen above, it may not look so appetising, but I've been assured it tastes okay, and more importantly the children eat it.

You can also see some of the classroom activities, making use of the extra furniture and resources provided by the project. It's so important to keep working hard with the teachers and the parents, something the project continues to work on, as the history between the two is not very good, there has been a lot of mistrust of the years. Both sides to blame, but with the project's influence we have seen that relationship got better, but there is still work to do.

We hope to continue working on building confidence for both parties, giving training for teachers, and awareness talks for parents.

Sadly, Jolana only has a short period of time left in Nepal, and is spending these last few weeks making sure all involved in the project are left feeling confident about the next 6 months before another project member goes and visits.

We will be updating you in the coming weeks of what happens in these concluding weeks, and also some of our future plans.