Where does the time go? I can’t believe we are already half way through October, it feels like only yesterday I was in Kathmandu! Well, it is time to return so Rebecca and I will be travelling to Nepal next Saturday, 20th October and we will be staying for around 2 weeks.
During our time in Nepal we have loads of exciting projects to both conduct and also plan for future trips next year. I will just mention a few of the main ones here and of course will keep you all updated with regular blogs when we are there.
Intellectual Property Training
Bec will be running two IP training courses for various industry groups in Kathmandu. We have been working towards this program for some time with the Nepal Trade and Export Promotion Centre. The course is designed to provide Nepali business people with basic information about their Intellectual Property rights and also their obligations. It will be particularly useful for those with import/export interests to help them exploit their brands and Nepal’s unique traditional knowledge overseas. With the recent political uncertainty in the country, IP has been one of the many areas that has failed to make it on to the list of priorities for government and seeing as it is Bec’s specialty we thought it would make sense to try and help out!
Teacher Training
We will be running the first of what we hope will be many teacher training courses with one of our new partners. We are in fact hoping that the course will be run from the new Model School which has recently been acquired (more on that once we are in Nepal). The course is designed to present teachers with more variety and creativity in teaching methods and to use non-violent means of disciplining students – two issues of critical importance in Nepal these days. We expect to run the course with some more experienced teachers this time with a view to them becoming trainers themselves so that the course can continue on a regular basis.
Journalism Course
A friend will be joining us on this trip which is going to be a lot of fun. She is a production editor with a professional publication in Australia and we are working with her to set up training for women interested in journalism. Long term we hope to set up facilities for the women to use their skills in creating community newspapers/newsletters as well as helping more experienced female journalists to make their voices heard. It will also be a great experience on a tourism level as our friend has never visited Nepal before so we will be showing her the sights and sharing some of the crazy adventures that inevitably happen there!
Dream Catchers
We will try to visit as many of the girls who are currently studying thanks to scholarships provided under our Dream Catchers project as possible. will be collecting report cards for all of the girls with their 1st term results and we will be sending these on to sponsors upon our return.
Other projects and plans
We will be meeting with some other people to work on developing some potential new projects and will provide updates as these come to fruition. We will also be spending a lot of our time working on plans for the trip next year by a group of girls from MLC Burwood. For more information on the plans for their trip you can take a look at our previous blog entry - http://mitrataa.blogspot.com/2007/07/exciting-plans-for-2008.html.
We are as always very excited to be returning to Kathmandu and hope to share as much of this fun and enthusiasm with you all through this blog along the way. In the mean time, please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or suggestions for us for this trip or any other aspect of the Foundation.
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