International Women's Day - 8 March 2009

Today is International Women's Day (IWD) and is being celebrated in Nepal through various programs along with many other countries across the world.

Mitrataa's work with women really crystallised with the Daisy Chains project, which has been a fantastic success. Enrollments have so far reached 330 for this project and we expect to easily surpass our goal of 500 later this year. At present all of the groups are in the final phase of their education - planning their businesses. This is an exciting time for these women and their energy and enthusiasm is inspiring. Some of the groups have been so eager that they have already started their businesses whilst still completing their lessons. Candle making has been particularly popular and successful in light of the ongoing electricity shortage in Kathmandu! We also have women selling clothes (using their group buying power to get cheaper wholesale prices), selling vegetbales, making and selling Nepali snacks, and one group is running a catering service.

To commemorate IWD our friends at CWISH have planned a week of educational programs and activities for these women as well as other women in their communities. The various programs on education will include topics such as social empowerment, women's legal rights and responsibilities, domestic violence, HIV awareness, women's health issues (particularly Uterine Prolapse which is a common problem for Nepali women) and labour rights. We firmly believe that all of these issues are critical and must be included in any comprehensive education program for women, teaching them to read and write is only the beginning.

At the conclusion of these programs we will be hosting a picnic for all of the women currently involved in the Daisy Chains project. This will be a chance for them to unwind for a day, celebrate all that they have learned and achieved so far, and motivate them to go into the next phase of their lives and work with a new sense of esteem and confidence. The picnic is scheduled for next Friday (13th March) so stay tuned for a report and some photos!

On a more sobering note, I was just reading the IWD website and was shocked by some of the statistics regarding women and their status in our world:

* 70% of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty in the world are women
* women comprise 2/3 of the +1 billion illiterate adults in the world
* women do 2/3 of the world's work but receive 10% of the world's income
* women's education is the most powerful predicter of lower fertility rates

Something to think about. There are many more statistics and pieces of useful information at the website.

Sarah takes on Dream Catchers!

As Mitrataa is continuing to grow we have recently had the good fortune of being able to add two new directors to our board. I will write a separate entry to introduce them soon but in the mean time I want to introduce you all to Sarah Johnstone. Sarah has been on the board since 2005 and she has been invaluable in that time in helping us with administrative matters in Australia. Recently however we have allocated more specific roles and responsibilities to each of the directors and Sarah is now manager for the Dream Catchers Scholarship project!

As most of you would know, Dream Catchers is the project that started the Foundation and it has continued to grow every year. We are now providing scholarships to almost 130 girls in Nepal and that number is set to increase again very soon with the start of the new school year. This means the work of managing this project has become enormous and as such we feel it would be better served if I was to hand the reins over to Sarah to focus on! In particular, Sarah will manage most of the communication with sponsors particularly with regard to sending reports each term and collecting sponsorship fees each year. Sarah will also manage the waiting list for girls needing scholarships whilst I will continue to manage the Nepal end.

The reason for this blog then is to firstly welcome Sarah to her new role, and secondly to let all of our valued sponsors know that you may soon start to receive emails from Sarah. From a sponsor’s perspective it will be business as usual so please feel free to contact Sarah if you have any questions or comments and of course you are still most welcome to contact Bec or myself.

Finally, I am in Kathmandu again for the next 12 days and hope to be able to provide some blog updates on the various new projects we are exploring this year. However, the electricity situation here has not improved since my last visit so ….

Adam Speaks at UWC in Singapore

On Tuesday (24th February) I visited the students in Grade 5 at United World College South East Asia (UWCSEA) in Singapore. The visit was the result of a discussion with one of our friends here whose son, Dash Baldwin, attends the school. The school is an IB school and his class had already been supporting an organisation in Nepal for some time as part of their global concern program. The organisation is CWIN (Child Workers in Nepal) which works with child domestic labourers in Nepal, a problem that I have mentioned in a number of previous posts and that we deal with every day through Dream Catchers and other programs.

We thought the class might enjoy hearing from someone who works in Nepal and we also took the opportunity to show some of the 100 Views Kathmandu documentary. Dash introduced me to the other students and he gave an excellent run down on Mitrataa and what we do – he had obviously taken a good look at our website and prepared very well! Next I had invited a number of students to prepare questions they could ask me so that the session was as helpful and relevant for them as possible. A number of them came up on stage with some very inquisitive questions for me; for example:

• how many child workers are there in Nepal? (about 100,000)
• how many kids live on the streets in Nepal? (about 5,000)
• what is the standard of education in Nepal? (pretty good for those who can afford it)
• how young are the children when they become domestic labourers? (can be as young as 3 but typically about 8-10)


I then briefly introduced the 100 Views program and how it tied in with the work we did with our model school and teacher training in Nepal. I explained that most teaching in Nepal is still very much based on a rote learning model and that we were working to try and change this.

It was then time to show the documentary. I could tell that the kids were engaged as they were quiet the whole time and I often heard gasps as they saw scenes of children collecting rubbish, carting large baskets on their heads, sitting in tiny classrooms with dirt floors. I think the whole presentation was well received and I certainly enjoyed the visit. We are exploring ways that some of the Grade 5 classes may be able to have an ongoing connection with some of their peers in Nepal, most likely at the model school.

I want to thank Dash for his fantastic introduction and to his teacher, Kari Twedt, for welcoming me and being so helpful with arranging everything to make the session such a great success! Thanks also to all the Grade 5 students who showed such an interest and inspired me with the involvement they already have with Nepal and their desire and eagerness to learn and do even more.

New Project - Defying Gravity!

"I'm defying gravity. I'm sick of accepting limits, 'cause someone says they're so." - Wicked, the Musical.

Plans are under way for the first of a number of new projects we will be launching this year – Defying Gravity!

This initiative follows on from our Daisy Chains project and is designed to give women with that extra bit of drive and ambition the assistance they need to establish their business and really make a difference in not only their own lives but the lives of other Nepalis around them.

To do this, we will be awarding up to 8 scholarships to women who submit a business proposal that includes the following:

• basic estimate of the start up costs;
• projected running costs and earnings;
• expected environmental impact and strategy;
• marketing plan; and
• outline of the ways in which their business will benefit Nepal.

Nepal is rich in many natural resources and there are a number of products indigenous to the country that could be exploited for the benefit of communities. In the current political climate there is also a large and capable labour force desperately needing employment. For these reasons we feel that this project is an exciting way to tap into these factors whilst maintaining our focus on education and training opportunities for women.

More details about the project can be found at our website or by contacting us. We are in particular looking for individuals and corporations who may be interested in sponsoring 1 or more of these scholarships that would change many lives in Nepal forever. Please get in touch if this is of interest to you.

Kids sharing their lives

Two of the projects the 3 volunteers worked on during their recent stint at our Model School were a pen friend program and a geography/cultural exchange program. Both programs are being run between students studying at Riviera and their peers studying at 2 schools in Australia.

The pen friend program is being run with kids from Year 3 at Bondi Beach Public School in Sydney. The first letters have been written by their pen friends in Nepal so these kids will soon be receiving a wonderful surprise in the mail - contact with a friend from an entirely different culture and part of the world!

The geography/cultural exchange is being run with kids from Year 7 at a high school in Eden on the New South Wales south coast. This program required the kids in Australia to prepare a postcard which detailed some of the geographical characteristics of the area in which they live. We then delivered these postcards to the kids in Years 7 and 8 in Nepal who had to create their own postcards to send back. The postcards from Nepal are on their way to Australia right now! This program has been particularly rewarding for the kids as their views of the world and what is 'normal' vary so much. The Australian kids obviously focused on beaches, bushland and native animals as features unique to their environment whilst the kids in Nepal have focused on the Himalayas, the many rivers in Nepal, and their religious customs as being unique to theirs.

As I was reading some of the postcards from Nepal I was very impressed with how perceptive the kids were and also how inquisitive. They were very quick to pick up phrases and expressions the Australian kids had used and also asked when they did not understand something. Some good examples were:

"What do you mean by AFL?"
"I don't understand your meaning when you refer to the bush."
"How big is a rugby field, can you play other games on it?"
"I am not sure if we have kangaroos in Nepal but let me tell you about tigers. They are flesh eating and I am afraid of them!"

Kids sharing such seemingly day to day subjects will benefit both sides enormously and help them to broaden their views of the world. We are hoping to expand these programs this year and are always keen to hear from schools interested in pursuing this type of exchange with kids from Nepal.

Story published!

Those of you following our blog updates for some time may recall last year our plea for assistance with a girl we had found in a particularly vulnerable situation. You can read more on that story by clicking here. Well thanks to the support of some wonderful people that girl is in school and living in the hostel at our model school.

This story is of course only one of many that we encounter in this field of work. It was a similarly difficult case that inspired to write a more formal account of my experience and this story has now been published at www.webchild.com.au. This is the online presence for the series of magazines Sydney's Child, Canberra's Child, Melbourne's Child etc.

You can read the story by clicking here.

We would like to thank Webchild for their support. All proceeds from the publishing of the story will be donated to Mitrataa.

New Volunteers

Last week we welcomed 3 young Australians to Riviera International Academy, our model school in Kathmandu. Indigo, Francesca and Patrick are all from Sydney and are travelling together after recently completing the HSC (final school exams before university). They will be working as volunteers with the teachers and students at Riviera for 2 weeks. We have had previous volunteer programs at the school and the kids absolutely love the novelty of interacting with foreigners in their classes.

Monday saw the volunteers start their work in the kindergarten section of the school. This can be the most fun but also the scariest place to start. With kids as young as 3 years old running around screaming, singing, shouting and delirious with excitement it takes a lot of courage to enter the fray. Nonetheless our volunteers were fearless and soon had their respective classes singing together, reading stories and doing some art and craft work. Some amazing classroom decorations and posters were the result!

Later in the week Indi, Fran and Pat moved on to classes 1 to 4 and after surviving their baptism of fire they found this much easier. Much of the challenge of course is that the very young kids do not yet understand much English - one of the reasons that contact with native speakers is so valuable for them. But in moving to the older classes the volunteers were able to do much more conversation work and help the students with all aspects of their studies. When we returned to the school on Friday afternoon it was extra-curricular activity time and all 3 volunteers were involved in intense games of badminton and skipping. They had settled in very well and the kids clearly loved having them there!

Saturday was a particularly exciting day at the school for 2 reasons: firstly it was the day in which offerings were made to Saraswati - goddess of education, and secondly it was report card day - the kids find out how they went in their 2nd term exams. This was a wonderful event for the volunteers to witness as it was a real insight into the culture and religion of Nepal as it is played out in daily life.

Bec and I left Nepal on Sunday but we have left Indi, Fran and Pat in the very capable hands of our family at Riviera and I am sure they will continue to have an amazing time in their second week there. We would like to take this opportunity to thank them for volunteering to work with Mitrataa - their time and energy will benefit the school enormously. If anyone else is interested in volunteering we would love to hear from you. Email me at adam@mitrataa.org.