Busy April Looming!

Happy New Year and Happy Chinese New Year to you all!

Bec and I have spent the first month of 2008 furiously planning for the exciting, challenging and hopefully life-changing projects that we are going to be working on with the Foundation this year. I have mentioned details of some of these previously, particularly with regard to the group of students, parents and teachers from MLC in Sydney who will be working with us in Nepal in April. Details of that trip can be found at http://mitrataa.blogspot.com/2007/07/exciting-plans-for-2008.html.

Dates and the itinerary for that trip have now been finalized and we are working with our various partners in Nepal to work out the final details. The group now consists of 35 people (!) which is enormous and is going to make for an awesome experience for all involved. Watch out for blog entries once the trip unfolds in April as I will be posting regular updates as well as loads of photos.

I will be spending about 7 weeks in Nepal starting from the 15th March and carrying right through until the beginning of May. Bec will be there with me for most of April too. During that time we have organised a formal training program for women journalists as a result of the fantastic forum we ran with Janet O’Connor in Kathmandu last year (http://mitrataa.blogspot.com/2007/11/women-journalists-forum.html). Janet will be returning to run the course which promises to provide loads of useful tools and ideas as well as continuing to establish a network for women in journalism in Nepal. We are proud to be working with the Nepal Working Women Journalists Association on this project.

Another of our friends, Libby Hathorn, an award winning Australian author, will also be visiting Kathmandu in April to establish the first 100 Views program in Nepal. The program is a teaching project focused around students doing creative works based on places/things of significance in their school’s area (more information can be found at http://www.100views.com.au). We will initially be running the course in the model school we have recently started working with in Maijubahal, Kathmandu. Once Libby has trained the teachers in how to implement the program, we will then be following this up with the MLC group who will start to implement the program with the students. It promises to be an amazing creative alternative to the standard teaching methods so often favoured in Nepal. The results of the students’ work will be shared with other schools who have participated in the project through the 100 Views website.

So as you can see April is looking pretty busy for us, but all of the programs will be so much fun as well as providing great opportunities and experiences for all those involved. In addition to this, we have started discussions with one of our partners in Nepal for the establishment of a massive initiative that could potentially affect the lives of around 500 Nepali women!!! Stay tuned for more information on this project in the coming months.

All of these projects are the result of inspiration from people saying to us, “I want to get involved in the Mitrataa Foundation – what can I do?”. Everyone has something to offer the people of Nepal. So if you would like to spend some time there – whether it be a few days, a few weeks or a few months – let us know and we can tailor a program for you.

We hope 2008 has been fruitful and fulfilling for all of you so far, and we look forward to sharing more news and details of our work as the year goes on!