Thinking outside the box!

As an education charity working in rural Nepal, we have faced numerous challenges over the years but none so great as the current situation in Nepal. What seemed normal in the past is now almost impossible. Bizarrely, what seemed impossible is now becoming possible!

If someone had told our Director Of Operations, Durga Aran a few years ago, that he would not be able to travel to Nepal to oversee the early education projects and that our young Nepal team would need to take the reins, he would have not believed them. Unable to travel to Nepal, Durga now conducts training, meetings and even staff interviews via Zoom from his home in New Zealand. There are huge advantages to this new situation. Firstly, Durga no longer needs to be away from his family for long periods of time, working in Nepal. Secondly, there is an enormous cost saving to the organisation. In the past Durga travelled across Nepal, to reach all the projects. However, this week, Durga has held productive meetings in four different parts of Nepal without leaving the office.

Durga now oversees the projects from his home in New Zealand through regular zoom meetings.

Durga previously spent 5-6 months per year overseeing the projects in Nepal.

Teacher Training Evolves

Just as we were getting our teacher training courses down to a fine art, we were no longer able to gather groups of teachers for training. At the start of the pandemic we doubted whether our Early Years Teacher training courses could possibly work via distance. The workshops focused so strongly on hands-on, practical activities. But we were forced to rethink and give it a go. The results have been amazing!

Teachers will be trained by distance using highly interactive and motivational training workshops.

Online training will be delivered in baskets or dokos like these.

Our original one week training courses have been divided up into baskets of knowledge (or dokos as they are called in Nepali). Each online course focuses on a particular theme regarding Early Years teaching such as developing strong relationships with children, teaching literacy and creating child-friendly classrooms.

We have worked hard to make the online training experience as interactive as possible. Soon, teachers at our rural project schools will be able to broaden their knowledge of child friendly teaching and develop a whole raft of activities that they can use to supplement the school curriculum. These new training dokos have turned out to be so much better than we could have ever imagined. We now plan to incorporate them into our face to face training when it is able to resume! Who would have known!

Creating teaching resources is an important part of our Early Years teacher training.

Teachers learn colour mixing and the importance of art in Early Years education.

Staff stepping up

Capacity building of our local supervisors and the Nepal management team has always been high on the agenda but when this becomes essential, it is amazing the level of change that can be made. In the past, pre-Covid, Nuwakot Supervisor, Binda Adhikhari once struggled on her own as the only staff member in her area; but now she is online regularly with the rest of the Nepal and NZ teams. Binda’s English is improving in leaps and bounds and she has impressed us with her hard work and sheer determination to gather data, even if it means hanging out of a window to take a photo! Binda is very resourceful and she has found that the best way to tune into Zoom training is by wedging her phone inside a giant roll of sellotape. It is an absolute pleasure working remotely with our dedicated Nepal team.

Nuwakot’s Community Resilience Programme

Originally our Community Resilience Programme was designed to educate communities about a number of social issues through street theatre and community film showings. However, the programme has had to be rethought quite drastically as the pandemic worsened and villagers could not gather in groups. Instead of conducting a house-to-house baseline survey, this is now being done by phone and over the internet. We have also created a Community Resilience Facebook page for the Nuwakot community which shares positive stories and tips for getting through the current situation. This is a great way of disseminating ideas to remote communities. The emphasis of the Community Resilience Programme now is on helping each other overcome fear, stress and anxiety as well as looking after health and immunity.

View of a yard near Binda’s home in Nuwakot. Not the pretty picture we normally see in Nepal, but the harsh reality of daily life for many.

Evidence of plastic rubbish amongst growing corn. One of the issues to be targeted in the Community Resilience Programme.

We aim to reach out to all members of the community to overcome stress, anxiety and fear during these challenging times.

The Community Resilience Programme encourages families to grow their own crops using sustainable farming methods.

Developing new income streams

Fundraising has had to be completely rethought too with the sudden halt of income from the charity’s successful social enterprise, Beyond The Clouds Travel. We used to organise treks and tours for people across the Himalayan region, with profits funding the charity. “Although the loss of income has hit the charity hard, it has freed up more time to devote to the programme, with fantastic results” says Founding Director, Fionna Heiton. When travel does become possible again, Beyond The Clouds will be back but quite probably more streamlined and easy to manage.

In the meantime, First Steps Himalaya is developing other streams of income to support the ongoing costs of its work. This includes e-Cards, wedding favours, bequests and the vital Friends of First Steps Himalaya programme. Recently, a choir in Nelson raised over $3,200 from an afternoon of songs from around the world. It is wonderful to have supporters across the world who understand the need for First Steps Himalaya’s work in rural Nepal.