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.