It was a meeting last year that brought the chance of bringing another art workshop to the Aandhimul village. Pati Corral, who has been living in Nepal for the last year and a half who has been sharing her home with me every time I visit Kathmandu with a cup of coffee. Subash Nepal - a student of cinematographie, Pati's boyfriend and Christine Levanas a designer from Berlin who is a regular vistor to Nepal - all of whom offered a their volunteering support after hearing my many talks about Aandhimul.
We have started with paper mache beeds, then prints on paper and later on cotton bags, finishing with pom poms. Our original idea was to make a product that we could sell and thus put the money back to school but primary just trying and bringing some interests and learning to the 3 weeks school holidays. Some colours were donated by a protestant municipality near Frankfurt/Germany.
What was amazing that some of the children who do not come regular to the school turned up. We had limited the groups to a maximum of 20 and ran them for approximately one hour thirty minutes long sessions. It was great to see their concentration, even when some aspects were quite difficult to understand like adding shapes to create a picture.
The project was funded by Andy from Germany and costed 5500 NRP to purchase items, most stuff was collected from shops dustbins and wood, glue and foam pad was donated by the Old Inn in Bandipur. It has brought so much light, and for me personally, a smile on my face! Pati, Christine and Subash worked really well and also the support from our project teacher's made it seamless. I was actually just amazed how well this went! The best thing is we are planning to run more of these next year!
Joli x
(Photos taken by Christine Levanas)
