The power of partnerships - COMO and St Catherine's visit

One of Mitrataa’s core values is networks and the power of partnerships. Over the last few weeks we have seen the wonderful magic that results from the strength of both.
 
COMO Ambassadors Visit

Every year, COMO selects a number of Ambassadors from its staff worldwide. The Ambassadors then choose one of COMO’s partners to visit. We were so fortunate this year to host 2 COMO Ambassadors – Ika from Malaysia and Judy from London. Judy and Ika spent 5 days with us, running various workshops and activities for our network of inspiring girls and women.

 

They taught sales and marketing techniques to our women’s network on Tuesday, made Malaysian traditional crafts with our Passion for Life girls on Wednesday, ran an intensive English workshop for 4 of our Dream Catchers scholarship girls and attended our 20^th Dream Centre graduation at the Wiley Dream Centre on Thursday, attempted to see the mountains at Nagarkot (sorry for the clouds, guys!) and helped us to run a “How to take control of your future” workshop for 35 of our older Dream Catchers scholarship girls in Bhaktapur on Friday and then hosted a Nepali New Year’s Eve Party with momos and games for the children of Bal Mandir on Saturday.

 

 

They were welcomed with open arms at each event – and they gave back their love and energy in equal parts. We thoroughly enjoyed having Judy and Ika with us – they immediately felt very much like part of the Mitrataa family and we welcome them back any time. Thank you both for everything.

 

COMO is a wonderful partner and we are very grateful for all of their support which is not only financial but equally importantly they help us to improve and grow as an organisation. We really enjoy working with them and hope to be given the opportunity to host more COMO Ambassadors in future.

 

St Catherine’s inspire our Dream Centre girls once more

 

Our partnership with St Catherine’s School in Sydney is one of our most successful, and a large part of that is thanks to the commitment, passion and energy of Sarah Hatch, the co-ordinator from the school who works tirelessly to fundraise for Mitrataa as well as to prepare and host the group of St Catherine’s girls every year. It is always a fun-filled and inspiring week when they visit and the group this year was no exception! They taught life skills in our Dream Centres over 3 days with topics varying from team work and motivation to how to work with the community to protect the environment. The week then ended with a celebratory picnic with games, friendship bracelets and a drama performed by our latest Dream Centre graduates. The Dream Centre girls hosted the picnic, showcasing their leadership skills as well as their enthusiasm for games and spending time with their new friends from St Catherine’s.

Our annual picnic with St Catherine’s is the highlight of our Dream Centre network’s year and they are already planning next year’s event! But it is not only the annual visit which makes our relationship with St Catherine’s so valuable. In addition to their fundraising support which we really appreciate, many of their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award students work with us as part of their community service element. This year, 3 girls from St Catherine’s plus Sarah Hatch helped us to launch the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (known as The International Award outside of Commonwealth Countries) for Mitrataa. We look forward to continuing this as our girls in Nepal embark on their International Award journeys also! Watch this space for news of our launch and our plans for the award in Nepal.

 

Thanks to our wonderful partners, COMO and St Catherine’s for your support in enabling us to empower the networks of amazing girls and women we work with in Nepal. We are excited about the possibilities for continuing to grow these partnerships in future!

 

We tailor all of our partnerships to ensure that they are mutual and that we build on each other’s strengths, passions and needs to create powerful, inspiring and fun-filled partnerships. If you or your company are interested in discussing a partnership with Mitrataa, please do not hesitate to let us know. We would love to work with you!

 

 

Wiley visits us - and dream sparks fly!

Our partnership with John Wiley & Sons Publishers began over 3 years ago and is one of our most successful, exciting partnerships. Wiley’s support has enabled us to run 2 Dream Centres plus a Women’s Centre as well as contributing to our tuition team at Bal Mandir. We were very excited to welcome 5 members of Wiley’s staff for a 6 day visit to Kathmandu so they can see first hand the results of their hard work fundraising. A competition was run to select the lucky staff members and 5 staff were selected to come and spend time with Mitrataa.

We put them to work so they really had an opportunity to interact with all the people who had directly benefited from Wiley’s support over the last 3 years. They began with a workshop on confidence and interview tips with the women from the Wiley Women’s Dream Centre. A couple of the women also explained how their lives had changed as a result of being a part of the Mitrataa program. Laxmi shared how she was now able to read signs and felt much more confident in following her dreams now she could read and sign her name in English. After the workshop, she commented that “It was nice to meet some people from Wiley and to teach them a dance as a thank you for their support. They have changed my life.” We had a fun filled morning, ending with our women teaching the visitors a Nepali dance.

Then it was on to Bal Mandir Children’s Home to run a workshop on how to teach grammar through games for the tutor team which has also been supported by Wiley. The tutors work with the 100 children in the home who attend school so their role is very important. Sarita, one of the tutors who home schools one of the children, commented – “I have a list of new ideas to try with Mishra which will really help engage her and make my lessons fun.” Bipana, our Dream Centre and Training Coordinator, also attended the workshop and was brimming with ideas at the end which she plans to share with all of the Dream Centre facilitators.

The next afternoon was spent in the Wiley Dream Centre in Chandol with the current batch of girls from class 5. They taught the girls some games and conducted a drama with them. Swastika Dangal, one of the girls in the centre commented after the workshop – “Our visitors from Wiley taught us so many useful things and games. Out of all the things they taught us, I found one of the stories named ‘Two little shy pandas’ was really motivating. From that story too I understood the actual importance of avoiding shyness and fear. I always myself to build confidence. When we have speech at our centre I mostly speak first.”

The final day was spent with many of the graduates from the Wiley Dream Centres. Wiley taught the girls about what a publisher does and then the girls developed their own book about living in Nepal. The girls were so happy to be able to thank Wiley representatives in person and to learn about what Wiley does. “I thought Wiley was an old man with white hair and now I know how many people at Wiley care about us. It’s a big family. Thank you, Wiley!” shared one of the girls after the program.

Wiley surprised us with a big cheque for $11,500 at the end of the last session. We really appreciate Wiley’s wonderful support.

Mitrataa means friendship in Nepali and our friendship with Wiley has had a direct impact on over 300 people in Nepal over the last 3 years. Thanks so much, Wiley family! And thanks so much to Lisa, Maya, Cat, Angelo and Janis for your energy, passion and laughter! We really enjoyed having you here. Please come again!

 

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.