A Wholesome Education for our Bal Mandir kids!

It’s Dashain and all the kids are home at Bal Mandir for the holidays – we have a full house! Celebrating the festival is a lot of fun and we have some wonderful family moments. But how we do we occupy 150 kids for a month of school holidays? We have a wonderful team and some wonderful supporters who help us! In addition to Jose Luis and his team from Spain who come every year and teach the kids craft and dance for a few weeks (as well as being the generous donors of our Dashain clothes for the kids – thanks, guys!), we also have our usual ECA Team – our extra-curricular activities program is sponsored by AdopsjonsForum from Norway, a group of generous families who adopted children from Nepal and wanted to find a way to continue to give back. Bikarna Shrestha is our ECA Project Co-ordinator as well as our football coach. In addition to our regular ECA activities such as football, basketball and karate, Bikarna has been busy over the holidays organising different activities to keep the kids active – we have had table tennis competitions, long jump and tug-of-war competitions as well as a dance/singing/drama program to celebrate the festival.

Birgitte and Leif from AdopsjonsForum visited us in February this year to discuss the ECA Program for 2012. They set us a challenge which I loved – to ensure that every single member of the Bal Mandir Naxal family gets to experience at least one ECA activity this year! This includes all the babies, our special needs kids as well as the hard working mothers and other staff. We took up the challenge and we are making enormous progress towards achieving it. Activities have included:
 

·         An outing to Dakshinkali, one of the holiest Hindu temples, for all of the house mothers and other staff, over 40 in total. They had a wonderful day at the temple, praying and making offerings as well as playing games and spending time away from the home and the kids. In the meantime, the older children all stepped up and divided into teams to look after the little ones for the day as well as cooking for everyone. I was incredible proud of the way they worked together and supported their family.

 

·         A trip to the Garden of Dreams for all of our special needs kids – Hearing Akriti giggle as she slid down the grass slope is a cure for any sadness! The girls had a fantastic time and couldn't keep the smiles off their faces.

 

·         Some hikes and treks for the older children to experience the beauty of Nepal.

 

·         An outing to a computer fair, a pottery making place and to a playground for some of the others.

We are well on our way to making sure that every single one of the family gets to experience something new thanks to the generosity of our friends in Norway. So watch this space to see what else we have in store!

We are very grateful to our friends in Norway for their support. In addition to supporting the ECA program (now known as the Wholesome Education Program – inspired by Bhutan’s education system as more than simply the school room learning!), they also donated 4 laptops to our computer room and 3 cameras for capturing memories around the home as well as new linen and pillows for all the kids so our beds look nice and clean and well-loved.

Thanks hugely to Birgitte and Leif for their leadership and hard work and to all of the families and friends in Norway who have helped us to give the kids and staff such a wonderful and fun-filled year.

Take our Passion Challenge today!

At Mitrataa, we are all about using our passions and strengths to achieve our goals - whether with the women and girls we work with in Nepal, as an organisation, or in our fundraising. So we are excited to launch our new fundraising program which encourages you to use your wonderful passions to raise $1,000 to allow the women and girls of Nepal to use theirs to achieve their dreams.

You can read about our Passion Challenge here – www.mitrataa.org/Passion-Challenge.pdf

And to get you started, complete our Strengths and Passions Activity here – www.mitrataa.org/Strengths-Passions-Activity.pdf

We cannot wait to hear your stories of how you go. So take up the challenge today and have some fun while contributing to Mitrataa's work at the same time. Who could ask for more!

Please help us reach our goal of 50 passionate fundraisers taking up the Challenge by passing this on to your friends and family and even getting a group together.

Thanks so much for your support. Have fun!

Bec xox

 

Inspiring Children's Day full of excitement, creativity, talent and the launch of "Sangita's Singing" children's book

The Mitrataa family celebrated Children’s Day this year in a style core to what we do – with creativity and the incredible talents of our children as the focus. We hosted 3 wonderful programs at our Wiley Dream Centre in collaboration with Dream Catchers Nepal, our local partner. The theme – “Our nation, our pride” – inspired a lot of positive celebration of the great talents and beauty of Nepal.
 

1)    Inspirations Awards – “Celebrating creative thinking in Nepal’s children” – we invited all our partner schools to participate in this art, poetry and story writing competition and we had entries from 15 of the invited schools which was wonderful. There is some real talent in our group with some very impressive writing and drawing. The English poetry and story writing competition was judged by Libby Hathorn, well-known Australian children’s author. The art competition was judged by Barbara Jones, and Australian artist and art teacher. The Nepali story writing and poetry competitions were judged by Saroj Dhungana, Nepali poet and journalist. Entries were judged in advance and prizes were awarded on the day. We plan to publish a book with the winning entries as a celebration of the creativity of the children. The winners were invited to special workshops the next day hosted by Libby and Barbara to continue their creative journeys.

 

2)  Mitrataa’s Got Talent – A dance and drama competition amongst our partner schools really showcased our children’s talents! After a fierce competition, our judges, Ajit Aryal (director of Achel theatre) for the drama and Birendra tamanag (dance teacher) for the dance, announced the winners. The acts all really brought our theme to life and our visiting guest judges got a true taste of Nepal’s talent!

 

3)  Launch of “Sangita’s Singing” children’s book – Libby Hathorn is an award winning Australian children’s author who has written over 50 books! She first visited Nepal with Mitrataa in 2008 to run the 100 Views program at Riviera. During that trip, she was inspired to write a story about a girl from the village who comes to Kathmandu to study and her journey towards literacy through the challenges of being bullied and a long way from home. The story was illustrated by Bandana Tulachan, an up and coming Nepali illustrator who is currently completing her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Kathmandu University Center for Art and Design. After a long journey, the book is finally complete and was formally launched on Children’s Day at our Nepali pride celebration. It looks fantastic and we are so excited. Two students read an extract from the book, supported by 2 girls acting out a scene at the launch.

 

     Libby has very generously donated all profits from the sale of the book to support Mitrataa’s work. Sangita’s Singing will soon be available through Mitrataa’s website – www.mitrataa.org – for A$25 (+P&H) so please order your copy for a loved one this Christmas and enjoy the wonderful story while knowing you are also supporting the dreams of the girls like Sangita who are supported by Mitrataa in Nepal. We will also be selling copies in Nepal and working with schools here to use the story as an educational tool as it covers so many wonderful themes – the importance of education, rural v city life, bullying, using your strengths to overcome challenges. Thank you so much to Libby who is a great supporter of Mitrataa. We are incredibly grateful to have you as part of the Mitrata family.

 

So huge thanks to our judges for their time and energy and especially to Libby and Barbara for travelling so far and for running the workshops on Saturday too. Thanks to all the schools and the kids who participated in a fantastic celebration of what is some amazing about Nepal – the level of talent and passion was wonderful!

And the biggest thanks to the Mitrataa team for all your hard work in organising this fantastic day which gave us an opportunity to showcase the work we do and the talent of the kids we have the privilege of working with. Without your hard work, none of it would have been possible. While every member of the team was involved, special thanks must go to Bipana and Ganga for leading the organisation for the Inspirations Award and to Subina for leading the organisation of the Mitrataa’s Got Talent competition. Thank you so much.

Ani Choying Drolma visits Bal Mandir and Mitrataa hosts Life Skills Brainstorming session

Another busy week for us at Mitrataa last week!

At Bal Mandir Children’s Home . . .

The children had a fun-filled Saturday with 3 very special guests. Girish Giri kicked things off by showing his documentary film about a Nepali football team which travels to India for an international football competition. The team came second and did Nepal very proud! Girish entertained the kids by sharing his experience in making the film – including that it was made for less than $10!

Then Ani Choying Drolma, well known Nepali Buddhist nun who has recorded several albums and who has the most amazing voice, hosted a singing session for the kids. Part way through she was joined by famous Nepali composer, Nhyo Bhajracharya, and a wonderful hour was spent singing and enjoying their company.

We are so grateful to Ani Choying, Nhyo and Girish for giving up their precious time to spend the afternoon with us. We all really enjoyed it and will remember it for a long time to come.

 And in other Mitrataa news . . .

One of the core aspects of our Dream Centre program is teaching the girls skills for life. We have developed our own manual for this program. Knowing there are some wonderful people and organisations out there also teaching life skills, we invited a hand-selected group of 12 like minded people to join our team for a day of brainstorming to share ideas and experiences about teaching life skills. We were also happy to be joined by 3 of the occupational therapists from the UK who are working with Mitrataa for 2 weeks. We explored questions of:

1)    What is in our Life Skills Toolbox? What skills belong in there. This was really interesting because we had a discussion around whether skills such as budgeting belong in the toolbox and came to the conclusion that they definitely too. Financial literacy is a crucial part of preparation for an independent life;

2)    How do we learn life skills? We turned the general question of how do we teach and switched it to a learned focused approach of how we learn the skills. We discussed Howard Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences model and then the participants gave us an opportunity to be students by teaching us one life skill using the different intelligences. We all came away with new ideas for our teaching!

3)    What does success look like? Measuring the success of our programs is always a challenge. You can’t tick the box – we’ve taught gratitude and now she is grateful. It doesn't work that way! So we exploring breaking each life skill down into a series of observable behaviours which would result from someone who was able to use the skill. We are compiling these into a document for all participants to share and test so we can build on it over time.

4)    What can this new network do in future? Mitrataa is all about the power of networks. Now that we have created this network of passionate life skills facilitators, we wanted to work out how best to use it in future for everyone’s benefit. We discussed having regular sessions on different topics, creating a resource library that we can all access online and also a Facebook page for us to share ideas and ask each other questions.

5)    How can we improve next time? We ended the day with a PMI on the session – Positives, Minuses and Ideas for next time, to help us grow and host even more effective sessions in future.

This was a really interesting day and I enjoyed meeting some interesting new people and there was a lot of food for thought. I am excited about the possibilities and opportunities this new Life Skills Working Group can explore. Thanks to all the participants for their passion, energy and engagement. It was fun!  

Dreamspeakers launch and farewell to Chetana

We've had 2 big pieces of news this week that we'd like to share with you all.

Chetana

First of all, we are sad to announce that one of our Senior Project Managers, Chetana Tulachan, has decided to leave Mitrataa to pursue her big dreams to change Nepal's future. Chetana has been a part of the Mitrataa' family for many years and has been at the heart of many of our successes. When Chetana first accepted our offer of a role in Mitrataa, we didn't have an office or a real job description! But with her passion and commitment, Chetana:

• was integral to the opening of the first Dream Centre, grasping the concept quickly, influencing various stakeholders to help them understand what we were trying to achieve and training a great team of facilitators in Diwakar, Gayatri and Elina. We now have over 300 girls in our Dream Centre network;
• has hosted school groups from MLC and St Catherines as well as numerous other volunteers and visitors;
• represented Mitrataa before various ministries  as we established our INGO status in Nepal;
• has built and led a fantastic team of inspiring, creative, passionate individuals who all work so well to achieve the amazing success we have been fortunate enough to deliver for our stakeholders.

And this is only a small part of what she has achieved!

On behalf of all the Mitrataa family, we thank you, Chetana, from the bottom of our hearts for all your energy and enthusiasm. We have loved having you on the team and we look forward to keeping in touch and following your progress towards your dreams.

Dreamspeakers Blog

A message from Diwakar, our DCN Project Manager, about our exciting new blog to celebrate the creativity of our Dream Centre girls:

"Dreamspeakers is the blog for our Dream Centre students. We believe that most of our girls have different kinds of creative talents. Some of them might have hidden it whereas others are seeking mediums for expression. This blog will be platform for their creativity that ranges from poems to paintings. This platform will take our girls around the globe, so they can share their beautiful works more widely than within the narrow circle of their classmates.

Since the blog will be updated by the team very closely working with the child writers, the feedback and comments the posts receive from the readers will help the writers to improve on their writing."

You can check out the blog at: http://dreamsfromdc.blogspot.com/ 

Please do check in often and see the wonderful talent of our girls!

Mitrataa signs MOU with CSU in Australia to take our teacher training projects to the next level

We are extremely excited to announce that we have signed an MOU with Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Australia as the next phase in our teacher training program. CSU is one of Australia’s leading universities in teacher training and the first phase of our partnership is to host student teachers from Australia to complete a part of their practical training at our model school in Kathmandu, Riviera. A group of 13 student teachers from Australia will spend 2 weeks in Riviera in November this year. At the same time, they will be working on a professional development program for our Riviera and other Mitrataa teachers to brainstorm some of the core issues we face in education in Nepal – assessment, strengths based teaching, maths, learning in a second language.

One of the greatest benefits of this partnership is that the first phase puts our teachers in Nepal in the position of the “experts” or more experienced teachers. This is in line with Mitrataa’s approach of trying to create mutually beneficial relationships which encourage the Nepalis rather than forcing them into positions of seeing foreigners as the experts and depending on them for knowledge and money.

We also hope to develop some teacher training certifications with CSU so that the training we provide in Nepal through Mitrataa’s programs will provide a recognised qualification for teachers in Nepal. Most Nepali teachers have never undertaken any formal training so providing them with a recognised qualification will help increase their professionalism.

This partnership has so much potential and we are really looking forward to working with the team at CSU to explore the opportunities.

Thanks so much to Graham Tyson, a wonderful Mitrataa supporter and head of our Rotary partnership program, for the introduction; to Pam Gibbons for coming to Kathmandu to discuss how this could work; to Margaret Hamilton for her incredible support in getting this organised; and to Trisha Poole who will be leading the group of student teachers to Nepal in November.

See report in the Western Advocate for more information and a photo!

http://www.westernadvocate.com.au/story/134131/student-teachers-help-underprivileged-kids/

Celebrating 3 years of Dream Centres!

Who can believe that it has been 3 years since we opened our first Dream Centre, the pilot centre in Baneshwor? On 5^th July 2012, we celebrated our third Dream Centre Day with 138 girls from our network of girls participating in painting murals at their schools with the theme “Let’s make our school better”. Through our 4 Dream Centres, we work with 6 different government schools and so we painted 6 murals – one at each school - to celebrate.  

1. Wiley Dream Centre - 18 girls from Dhumbarah school, 18 girls from Panchakanya school participated in the celebration

2. Baneshwor dream centre - 14 girls from Siddeshwor school, 24 girls from Bhimsengola school participated

3. Wiley Women's Dream Centre (Gyaneshwor) - 18 girls from Gyaneshwor school participated and

4. MLC Dream Centre - 46 girls from Koteshwor Saraswoti School

In the last 5 years, we have had over 300 girls graduate from our Dream Centre program, with increased confidence, self-esteem, life skills and a new network of friends to support them in their futures. The facilitators continue to give tirelessly to ensure the girls get the customised support they deserve and so much of the success comes down to the relationship the facilitators develop with the girls, giving them someone to believe in them and to trust when they need to share a challenge they are facing.

In addition to continuing to develop and learn and expand our existing Dream Centre program, we are also currently working on some exciting new things: 

1)    Passion For Life Leadership Program - We have just started a leadership program with some of our graduates from the Baneshwor Dream Centre as the next phase of this project and I am really excited to see what we achieve in this pilot program with some amazing young women. I’ll introduce you to them over the coming months with updates on this new program;

2)    Our Life Skills Manual – We have tried and tested our Life Skills Lesson Plans (and teachers’ notes) and we are in the process of revising them to include all our learnings and ideas. This will be done shortly and then we hope to publish the manual to make it available to others to learn from too;

3)    Life Skills Brainstorming – We have learned some wonderful lessons and had some great conversations about teaching life skills over the last 3 years. We’re now keen to start a broader conversation with others who are teaching these important skills so we can all share our experiences and ideas and continue the upward spiral of energy towards even greater success for the girls we work with. Our first brainstorming session will be held in Kathmandu in early August with a hand-selected group of experts in this field.

 
Huge thank you to our wonderful sponsors for the Dream Centres – Wiley and MLC. Wiley continues to be one of our most wonderful partners and we are so grateful for their support which has allowed us to do so much. Thanks to all our other great supporters too – without you, we wouldn't be here!
 
Huge thank you also to the Mitrataa team in Kathmandu, past and present. You guys continue to inspire me every day with your passion, commitment, energy and ideas.
 
Our biggest thanks to the girls we work with who put their trust in us and come to the Dream Centres with open hearts and minds. You girls are amazing and we are lucky to have you in our Mitrataa family!

I look forward to updating you on more developments soon. In the meantime, as always, thank you and please let me know if you have any questions, comments, suggestions or ideas – bec@mitrataa.org.

Tax time in Australia and time to change the world!

Attention our Aussie supporters: It’s tax time!

To our non-Aussie supporters: You can benefit too!

 

It’s tax time in Australia – it seems to come around fast, doesn’t it? As you’re starting to think about collecting all those receipts together and how much tax you may have to pay this year, how about making a last investment for the year by making a donation to Mitrataa? All donations over $2 are fully tax deductible in Australia.

 

 

Here are the benefits for you of making a donation to Mitrataa:

• You are investing in a wonderful future not only the women and girls of Nepal but for your children too;
• You get a deduction from your tax bill if you are an Australian tax payer;
• You get the satisfaction of knowing you made a direct impact in the lives of girls like Bibika who has just started studying in our model school thanks to the generosity of one of our sponsors;
• You can increase your own happiness – research has shown that spending our money on others has a much greater impact on our happiness than spending our money on ourselves!

And how far will your donation go?

 

It’s a win-win donation so if you’ve been thinking about making a contribution to Mitrataa, today is a great time to do it! It's easy:

• Click on the link to go to our website - http://www.mitrataa.org/
• At the bottom of the homepage is a button "Make a Donation" - click on it
• You'll be taken to Paypal where you can make a donation
• Alternatively, if you'd like to deposit the money directly into our bank account, email Bec and she'll send you the details - bec@mitrataa.org

Thank you so much for your support. Without you all, we couldn’t be making a direct impact on the lives of over 3,000 Nepali women and children, leading to an indirect impact on the lives of over 5,000 people in Nepal.

 

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Anne Frank





Investing in the future - Dream Catchers

Imagine a world where your children didn't see other children suffering from poverty on television. A world in which every child had a chance to achieve their dreams and support their families. A world in which poverty no longer existed. It’s possible.

Invest in this future world by sponsoring a Dream Catchers Scholarship – an opportunity for a child to get a good education which will change their future. It costs just A$360 a year to provide a scholarship which covers the child’s school fees, uniforms, books, stationery and basic medical care if required. In addition to the return on your investment of a better future for this wonderful world we live in, you will also receive details of the recipient of the scholarship (including background and a photo) plus their school reports so you can track the progress.

It’s the new school year in Nepal and we have 30 children requiring scholarships. As you know, Mitrataa generally focuses on scholarships for girls but since we took over the management of Bal Mandir Children’s Home, we have a number of younger boys in our family as well.

You can log onto the website (www.mitrataa.org) and click on the Donate Now button at the bottom of the Home Page. Please include your name and email address and we’ll send you details of the child whose future just got brighter.

For any questions, please drop us an email – bec@mitrataa.org.

Please sponsor a Dream Catchers’ Scholarship. It’s not a donation, it’s an investment in your children’s future.

Graduations and Dreams Galore

It’s my favourite time of the session – our Dream Centre graduations! We had 3 centres operating this session – the MLC Dream Centre in Koteshwor, the Wiley Dream Centre in Chandol and the Baneshwor Dream Centre. And as always, the girls put on a wonderful show in each centre for their Graduation Days. The girls host the events, complete with MC roles (one in English, one in Nepali). Bipana, our Dream Centre & Training Co-ordinator, conducts Anchor Training to help them prepare for this big responsibility. They all did a wonderful job and the singing and dancing and sharing of their experiences and dreams was inspiring as always.
Some highlights:

• At the Wiley Dream Centre, we had a very creative bunch this session. They wrote many of the songs and poems performed at the graduation themselves. They are a very confident and determined group who showcased many of the life skills they have learned at the Dream Centre in their graduation activities. I was very impressed. We had a number of employers (of the girls who work as domestic workers) attend the graduation which is always a credit to the facilitators’ work in managing all our stakeholders.

• At the Baneshwor Dream Centre, for the first time ever, one of the girls translated my short speech to the girls for me! Usually one of the team translates but I was thrilled to have one of the girls translate for me. This is a very difficult task but a wonderful skill for her to have. A very impressive young woman – thanks, Saraswoti! This group LOVE to dance too – we struggled to get them off the dance floor at the end. A couple of the girls came to the MLC graduation too and performed their dance again! One of the girls’ teachers attended and was very positive about the impact of the program on the girls’ attitudes and performance at school.

• At the MLC Dream Centre, we have a group of future Bollywood stars! Many of the girls had already gone home to the village for the holidays so there were only 6 girls present but they still put on a huge show for us. They performed a drama about abuse and survival very confidently. They performed it a second time for some later comer guests – and it was the same concepts, the same general plot but completely adlibbed. A wonderfully confident group who will survive whatever life throws at them. The principal of the school where the girls study is a great supporter of our program and he noted at the graduation that the improved confidence and performance of the girls was very strong.

Our facilitators did a wonderful job – I am constantly amazed at the results they achieve in the girls who come to our Dream Centres. They are a fantastic team who keep pushing themselves to achieve more and more. Well done, team. Fantastic graduations as always. So congratulations to the girls and we look forward to keeping in touch with them through our network events and to welcoming the new group of girls in a few weeks!

The power of friendships that inspire – Rotary District 9700 adopts Mitrataa!

We are so excited to be working with Rotary District 9700 – South Western New South Wales, Australia. This RAWCS project, driven by Bathurst Daybreak and Orange Daybreak Clubs, has already made a substantial different for our work at Bal Mandir Naxal Children's Home and this is just the beginning!

Gaye, Irene, John and Dave with Rachana

In January, a team visited us with fantastic results. After 2 weeks with us, they had:

• Given the babies’ room a complete overhaul with a fresh coat of paint, new mobiles for all the kids, a good scrubbing down of all the cots, new hot water heaters for the mothers and a great dose of love for everyone involved. Thanks heaps especially to Sylvia, Niamh, Ann, Irene, Judy and Gaye for their wonderful support here.




Irene and Gaye with the happy mothers and babies in their newly painted room!

• Installed an inverter into the computer room and donated (and set up) 4 laptops for the kids to use. Thanks heaps to Dave, John and Graham for this.

• Fixed a lot of the lights and other electrical issues in a number of the kids’ rooms. Thanks heaps, John and Dave!
• Run first aid training for the mothers and a group of the older girls. Thanks, Sylvia!
• Run a painting workshop for our toddlers – we discovered a couple of Picassos in the making! Thanks heaps, Jane and Judy and everyone who helped with this.
• Kicked off some renovations to fix our front gate, and 2 of our staircases.
• Donated some bags for the kids to use for school bags and for basketball gear.
• Donated some lanyards which will shortly be used for our new Visitor Passes.
• Visited our model school in preparation for the April teacher training team. Thanks, Judy and Graham.
• Visited Bhaktapur Rotary Club to discuss future support – Bhaktapur Rotary, supported by Rabindra Puri, is the local Rotary connection.
• And scoped a number of other projects for support moving forward.

Sylvia bandages up Asha in First Aid Class

I am exhausted just thinking about all that they did! Thanks so much to the amazing team who dedicated their energy to working with us. It was fantastic. Thanks especially to Graham Tyson for driving this project and organising everything.

 

Now we are madly preparing for the next wonderful group to arrive on Saturday. There will be 3 teams:

• A teacher training team who will be working with our Riviera, model school, teachers and a group of teachers from the village and a team who will be also working with our toddlers teachers at Bal Mandir;
• A health team who will be working on dental and mental health issues at Bal Mandir; and
• A maintenance team who will be working on the bunks and cots at Bal Mandir to help us say goodbye to bed bugs once and for all!

Thanks to Mary Brell who has helped put together this fantastic team. We are excited about what they are going to achieve.

Jane mentors our future Picassos!

This partnership is a perfect example of how a really mutual, focused partnership can work and we love working with the Rotary team! Thanks heaps, guys. You all get the Hero of the Day Award!