Bal Mandir Orphanage

Today provided one of the most enjoyable as well as depressing aspects of our visits to Nepal. We visited the main orphanage in Naxal in Kathmandu. 11 of the Foundation’s scholarship girls are orphans living here. As well as checking in on them we also had the opportunity to take a look around at the facilities and meet many of the other children and babies that have been abandoned for various reasons here.



Orphans and orphanages in Nepal are experiencing a very difficult time at present on a number of fronts. The first of these is that the ongoing political instability combined with an already high incidence of chronic poverty means that many families simply cannot afford to keep their children, especially if they are girls. As you probably know, girls and women do not enjoy an equal footing with boys and men in the minds and attitudes of many Nepalis. Children born with disabilities, even if relatively minor by developed world standards, are also often discarded. Today we saw a number of babies and children with various disabilities such as deafness, blindness, down’s syndrome and muscular dystrophy. In spite of the additional challenges these children face, their spirit, smiles and energy were infectious and inspiring.

Another challenge faced by orphanages in Nepal is the alarming rise in the number of people who have basically rented a house, put up a sign and declared their premises an orphanage. Even worse is that many of these places are buying (and in some cases kidnapping) babies and children from remote and poor areas and placing them in their ‘orphange’ in order to show foreigners who obviously then make donations for the care of the children. You can imagine how little of these donations are put towards the care of the children. Some of these establishments have also been selling babies to naïve foreigners for obscene amounts of money. This kind of behaviour has tarnished the reputation of all orphanges in Nepal and made things much more difficult for the legitimate organisations.

As a result of the alarming increase in the numbers of these ‘dodgy’ orphanages the government recently put a hold on all overseas adoptions until systems could be put in place to prevent this black market. Unfortunately as with most things in Nepal it has taken longer than expected to rectify the situation as the ministerial post responsible for handling this situation keeps changing and in fact at present does not have anyone to fill it! This causes particular concern for the legitimate orphanages which would typically be adopting out a reasonable number of their orphan babies to overseas parents – as this has ceased they are rapidly running out of space. Just because the government has stopped processing adoptions does not mean that children and babies have stopped becoming orphans.

This is just another example of the many challenges facing Nepal on a daily basis. You could be forgiven for thinking that the people must have given up hope but we can proudly report that we were shown around the orphange by a dedicated member of staff there who was as optimistic and determined as a person could be. Of course all of the children were playing as though they didn’t have a care in the world and we continue to hope for and work towards a Nepal in which this is true.

Back in Kathmandu!

We arrived in Kathmandu without incident on Sunday morning after taking an alternate route on Air China via Chengdu and Lhasa. The usual Thai flights have been booked out for weeks which is a fantastic sign for Nepal, which is absolutely buzzing with tourists. Another bonus for us was flying over the expanse of the Himalayas and directly alongside Mount Everest – a view that always inspires.

It is the middle of the major festival time in Nepal which always adds to the excitement around town. Many Nepalis are wearing their best clothes and racing from house to house to share food with their friends and families. There are often offerings placed on the streets and out the front of people’s homes in the hope of attracting Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, into the home or shop.

On Monday we met with some Nepali friends who invited us to their home for some dal bhat, well I should say it was rather more special than the usual variety. They placed about 15 dishes in front of us containing everything from spicy chicken to goat’s lung and most things in between. It was wonderful to share the festival experience with a local family. We also talked with them about the current political situation in the country and unfortunately it sounds as though things are as up in the air as always.

Tuesday was the first day of ‘work’ and our first task was collecting our friend, Janet, from the airport – always an adventure in its own right! This is Janet’s first visit to Nepal and she is planning to work with us on devising some Journalism training program for women journalists. We will also be showing her some of the sights of Kathmandu as well as some of the projects we have been working on.

In the afternoon we met with Milan and Shanti, directors of CWISH, one of our partner organisations in Kathmandu. We had many projects to discuss with them and are excited to confirm that we will be running our first teacher training program in the model school at the beginning of November. Bec will be conducting a 3 day course for the teachers of the school on different teaching methods encompassing different learning styles. This is the first step in our long term plan to make the model school a resource for this type of work so that we can then expand the program to other teachers and schools thoughout all of Nepal!

On the model school, CWISH have taken over an existing school for this purpose about 1 month ago. We will be visiting the school next week and helping them with plans for decoration and sourcing resources and equipment. The school currently has about 200 students between Nursery and class 10, including 40 students living in the school hostel. We will be looking at a particular scholarship program that will be run through this school in the coming months so stay tuned!

We also discussed the jounalism program with Janet, Milan and Shanti. We are going to conduct an initial session one morning with some young women journalists who are currently working on their own community radio station. We hope to get an idea from speaking with them about exactly what type of things they are most interested in receiving support for and also an idea of what they are most passionate about in pursuing journalism in Nepal. From there we will be able to devise a program targeted to their needs and aspirations, and this can then be run on future visits to Nepal.

So, as you can see it’s full steam ahead for us here! Later in the week we will be visiting Bhaktapur and possibly Phulbari, and also checking in on some of the sponsored girls. As always we love to hear from you if you have any comments or questions – particularly whilst we are here in case it is something related to being in Nepal. That’s all for now but look out for more updates soon…

Trip to Nepal

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.

New fundraising ideas and other news

Some good news to start things off – we have finally set up a PayPal account and now have this option for donating money and paying sponsorship through our website. You can currently pay through the Dream Catchers section but we are also re-jigging a few of the pages on the site to incorporate the option on other pages and will post an update here when that is complete. The PayPal setup also relates to a couple of other ideas we have been working on…

As more of our projects take off, we need to raise more funds so we are looking at some creative fundraising ideas:

Gratitude Elephants

Many of our friends have recently received a small gift in the mail - a Gratitude Elephant. These are small elephants hand-made by women’s co-operatives in remote areas of Nepal. We are working on sourcing a regular supply of them from Nepal and plan to sell them as a gift option from our website. We enclosed a small message when we sent them to friends that reminded them to be grateful for everything they have in the world and to always think of those less fortunate. We were amazed at the enthusiastic response we received and some have even decided to take up the gesture with their own network of friends which is very exciting. It all comes back to the idea that the smallest acts of kindness can make a big difference. As the result of enthusiastic requests, we have decided to make these Gratitude Elephants available on the website. Stay tuned for news of when this part of the website is up and running and get ready to place your orders! Of course 100% of the profit from the sale of the elephants will go towards the work of the Foundation and you will be helping Nepali women as well as getting a great gift to give friends.

Mitrataa Incense

Once we have the website shop up and running we will be offering Mitrataa incense for sale. The incense comes in a compact box and includes a Mitrataa ceramic tile to hold the burning incense, and four different fragrances of incense to burn. We will be able to take larger orders for the incense if people want to on-sell them in their shops, cafes etc too. As with the elephants, 100% of the profit from the sale of the incense will go towards the work of the Foundation.

So, lots of new reasons to come back to our website http://www.mitrataa.org! As we start to expand the range of things on offer it may also be a great time to forward this blog posting or our info on to anyone you think may be interested in Mitrataa and the work we do.

We are off to Nepal in October for 2 weeks to run a teacher training course, an IP training course and an exciting new training course for women journalists in Kathmandu with a wonderful guest presenter. Watch this space for more information to follow shortly.

Take care and have fun always!

Exciting Plans for 2008!

I mentioned in a previous entry that we are planning some activities for a group of girls from MLC Burwood (a private girls’ school in Sydney) to do when they visit Nepal next year. Well, their trip is now booked and we are getting down to the nitty gritty of sorting things out! There are about 30 people coming in total so it is sure to be a fantastic experience for all involved. The first week the group will be doing some trekking and the second week will be spent with us on various Foundation projects.

Bhaktapur

We are going to spend one morning visiting the historic town of Bhaktapur, just outside of Kathmandu. Bhaktapur has many beautifully restored temples and buildings and is an excellent living example of traditional Nepalese architecture and design. We have been helping the Muscular Dystrophy Centre there so we are going to work with them to do a treasure hunt weaving through the alleys and laneways of the town. We will divide the group up into teams and each team will include a couple of boys from the centre. This will be an amazing day for these boys as they rarely ‘get out’ and are not allowed to go to school because of their disability – it really will be a once in a lifetime experience for them!



The program will conclude with a lunch in a traditional Newari (one of the main castes in Nepalese society and the major influence on the architecture and culture of Bhaktapur) house. The house we have in mind has been renovated recently after it fell into disrepair and became a chicken shed! The restoration work is spectacular and has even received an award from UNESCO.

Phulbari

One day will be spent visiting a school the Foundation is working closely with in Phulbari. This is a small village in the hills just outside of the Kathmandu Valley. Reaching the school will involve a small trek as the bus can only get us so far!

At the school the MLC girls will be divided into groups to work on a number of different activities including:

1. Teaching an art class with a view to the Nepali students preparing some works that can be auctioned in Australia as a fundraising exercise;
2. Painting a mural on one of the outside walls of the school building; and
3. Delivering library bags that the girls will have prepared in Sydney before the trip.

Teaching – Model School

Two of the days will be scheduled for teaching programs in the model school, another project the Foundation is working on at present. Some of the activities we are working on doing with the girls include:

1. Teacher training programs in which the girls from MLC provide examples of the different methods of teaching that could be used to teach a straightforward class such as Maths or Geography;
2. Starting the 100 VIEWS project, 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/); and
3. Preparing a musical/dance item to perform for the school. The idea here is that the Nepali students will also perform a traditional Nepalese dance and then each group can teach the other their dance, no doubt leading to loads of fun and laughter!


These are just a few of the things we are working on at the moment and it already looks as though it is going to be an amazing experience. The plan is for MLC to introduce this trip as a regular activity for the girls each year which means they will be able to develop ongoing relationships with the places they visit and the people they meet.

We want to give our heartfelt thanks to Rosemary King and Judy Tenzing, both of whom originally approached us with this idea. Rosemary is a teacher at MLC and is the chief organiser within the school, Judy teaches at another school and is a good friend of Rosemary’s and most importantly is responsible for organising all of the travel logistics for the trip! Judy has a longstanding association with Nepal and she shares our passion for its people and culture. We are really excited to be working with her on this initiative.

It is so rewarding to be able to work on a project that creates more direct involvement with people from Australia and hopefully it is only the start of something that will become much bigger!

Just some thoughts...

Well I'm back in Shanghai after a fantastic trip to Australia, successful both as a holiday for Bec and I but also for some of the really positive and exciting meetings we had for the Foundation.

I have just finished reading "The End of Poverty" by Jeffrey Sachs and I have to say it is well worth the read. He gives some amazing examples of ways that developing countries have been able to move forward and he also sets out exactly how achievable initiatives such as the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) are. It is also interesting to read about the apparent disconnect between the rhetoric of developed countries and their real actions, and the fact that we all have a responsibility to call them out on this.

I then also happened across a little article in the Nepali Times recently which suggests that at the current rate the MDGs with regard to education will not be achieved. It also reveals that almost 700,000 Nepalese children are still without access to education. You can access the article by clicking here. I was shocked by this figure but not surprised.

All of this reading has led me to two thoughts:

1. How worthwhile and critical the work of the Foundation is in helping the children of Nepal to create opportunities and the means to end their struggle with poverty; and
2. How easy it is for all of us to make a difference. Contributing does not always have to involve giving money, there are many other things all of us can do such as -

• becoming more informed about situations of particular interest
• promoting awareness of these issues
• volunteering time and skills
• joining groups of likeminded people to share ideas and work together on larger projects

I know it often seems as though there are too many problems in the world and so there is no point doing anything. I also know from first hand experience that very small acts of kindness and generosity can change the lives of people in unimagineable ways.

We all have a choice, what will yours be?

Travelling Again!

Namaste again and apologies for the gap on posting lately! I returned to Shanghai from Kathmandu on Tuesday (5th June) after a very productive and rewarding trip. I barely had time to wash my clothes and detox myself before Bec and I were on a plane to Sydney the next Saturday (9th June).

Our time in Sydney has been extremely hectic in terms of catching up with friends and family but most importantly we have also had the opportunity to get some work done for the Foundation. We met with the board of directors in Sydney and spent a few hours discussing my recent trip to Kathmandu as well as plans for many of the projects to move forward. Some simple little things that we have worked out include adding PayPal to the website for easier donation/sponsorship payment, adding a subscribe button to this blog so we can spread the Mitrataa story further more easily, and making plans for more regular fundraising ideas for Sydney.

At the rather inhumane time of 7:30am on Tuesday (12th June) we visited MLC Burwood (a private girls' school in Sydney) to discuss Nepal and plans for a group of girls to visit next year. This is a really exciting project that now has around 28 people booked in to attend. They will travel to Nepal in April 2008, spend one week trekking and seeing the sights, and then the second week will be spent working on various projects for the Foundation. It was awesome, as always, to have the opportunity to speak to a group of people about our experiences in Nepal and share some of our passion and enthusiasm for doing work there. As plans become more concrete we will post details on our website - http://www.mitrataa.org/.

We also had the good fortune of being able to give a presentation about the Foundation to one of the Sydney district Rotary Clubs. This was organised through one of our good friends and directors, Sarah Johnstone. Again, we were more than happy to have the opportunity to speak about Nepal and we are hoping that we may be able to work with the Club on some initiatives in the new fiscal year.

That's all for now, Bec and I are spending this week in Bendigo having a bit of a retreat and catching up on some work that inevitably arises from all of this travel!