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.

Some challenges but more good stuff happening!

It has been an interesting few days in Kathmandu so far, trying to get work done with electricity supply sporadic at best. It seems the best time to try and do any work is between 4am and 8am most mornings as this is when you can get a fairly reliable charge for the laptop and the internet should stay connected! Unfortunately this is not the only difficulty people here are facing right now as we have just seen the end of an 18 day garbage collection strike!

Still, we have managed to make some good progress with new projects for 2009. The first of these involved Rebecca presenting at a forum on the future of the pashmina industry in Nepal. We have been working with Nepal Pashmina Industry Association (NPIA) for some time helping them with trade mark registrations and general branding advice. (Read more about this at our website.) We wanted to take this further as pashmina is one of the industries with the best potential for Nepal. The forum brought together industry specialists including scientists from the Nepal Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) and collectively we have started working towards a strategy to improve the processing infrastructure for the industry. This will include a large education component for women in the key areas where pashmina goats are farmed. These areas are typically high up in the Himalayas and quite poor, with little education and basically a subsistence lifestyle. The research carried out so far suggests that with a small amount of targeted input we will be able to make some big inroads into providing education and training opportunities for the women and girls in these areas. Stay tuned for more as this project takes shapes during the year.

The electricity situation has made blog updates very difficult but we have been ‘on the go’ for the entire week and we will post the updates as and when we can!

Update on the situation in Nepal

As Bec and I pack our things for another visit to Nepal we have been reading some news articles that have left us feeling somewhat ambivalent about the situation there. The maoist-led government have been in power now for around 8 months and last week saw the launch of their very ambitious campaign to provide basic literacy skills to the 8 million adults in Nepal who currently are unable to read or write. It is a huge undertaking and involves thousands of volunteers working as teachers. The project has not been without hiccups as there has still been the problem of getting the necessary text books to the more remote regions of the country. This is a problem that occurs every year with school text books as schools outside the major urban areas often have to wait half the year to receive the curriculum and books for that year!

To the government's credit measures were put in place to avoid such a delay with providing the literacy text books but recent severe power shortages have foiled their plans. For the past couple of weeks most people across Nepal had to endure 16 hours without power each day, even in built up city areas. Power was only available between 10pm and 4am each day. As you can imagine, this makes doing business and most aspects of daily life nearly impossible. For a country with access to the world's largest natural water source, it is very disappointing that more has not been done to harness this resource for 'clean' electricity. Unfortunately with the problem now so severe there is talk that Nepal will start importing even more diesel-powered generators which sounds like a good idea to solve the problem except that the country typically has trouble maintaining a sufficient supply of diesel and other fuel to operate such generators as well as for motor transport. This means we are soon likely to see more access to electricity each day but little or no access to fuel, meaning long queues at fuel stations, and more difficulty for those who rely on transport for their livelihoods.

There is a real sense at the moment that the government are simply juggling problems to appease different groups for a short period at a time. We were heartened to hear yesterday that power cuts have now been reduced to only 10 hours per day due to an increase in snow melt from the Himalayas flowing into the rivers that service the hydro-electric power stations. But this will not stop the increasing dependence on fossil fuels for industry to be able to move forward. It is clear the challenges facing the new government are immense and we remain hopeful that they can start to deliver solutions before the country turns once again to violence and instability.

The BBC regularly reports on news from Nepal and you can find these stories by clicking here. In particular, you can read the story about the power situation by clicking here. Also, for an interesting look at the views of some Nepalese people from all walks of life click here.

Bec and I will just be in Kathmandu for 10 days and during that time we will be checking up on all of the Foundation's projects as well as having some meetings to plan the launch of more exciting new projects this year. So stay tuned for more on these in the coming weeks.

Christmas message

Wow, 2008 has been an amazing year for Mitrataa with so many new and exciting projects taking off. We have also been fortunate to have some truly amazing people come on board to contribute in different ways. There have been numerous visits to Nepal and we have had the pleasure of working with some fantastic volunteers who made the journey there as well. The most exciting part of this is that 2009 is already shaping up to be as big or even bigger!

We want to say a massive 'thanks' to everyone who has supported us throughout the year. We couldn't have done it without you, your contributions make the world of difference. We also want to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and New Year, and look forward to hearing from you and keeping you all updated on our work in the new year.

Bec and Adam