This is a very happy blog post for me to be writing...!! I'm
delighted to say that we in Nepal
have received a rather large grant from the
PoD Charity this month.
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| Currently the kids at Ward 6 are bringing their carpet out to sit on. |
Once we heard this new, myself and Phil set about visiting
all our placements to find our their current needs and wants. We then complied
a list and emailed it back to the UK Head Office for them to look over and they
have approved where we will spend the money.
For
Shree Krishna school we are giving a donation to buy
sports equipment for the school. They currently don't have any equipment and
therefore their P.E lessons are limited. Our volunteers take in badminton,
football and cricket, but it will be great for them to have their own equipment
so they can continue these lessons even when they do not have a volunteer.
At
Asha, we have agreed to give a monthly donation to
provide meat for all the children. They currently do not have enough money for
meat (and believe me I can vouch for the fact that the cost of meat has double
in the last few years!) and live soulely of the farmland that we rent for them.
This way, they should get a meat dinner at least once a week!
We have also offered to run a training day for the Asha
Foundation which will cover important topics such as sex education and careers
guidance. The schools in Nepal
do not cover sex education or women's health issues, but we think it is vital
for all children to know how to properly take care of themselves, especially
when we have a large group of male and female teenagers living under the same
roof. We are yet to confirm a date for this but I will let you all know once it
has been organise.
We will be buying a large outdoor mat for the kids at
Ward 6. For those of you who have been there, will know that the center has a large
outdoor area but there is no where for the kids to sit down and play (except
for in the dirt or on the concrete), by providing a mat, we essentially will
double the size of the center for the kids to play.
At
Shree Pratbhat Primary School, we have agreed that we
will give monthly donations to provide lunches and stationery and a one off
cost to pay for a new carpet in the nursery. 95% of the children at Shree
Prabhat are from the Dallit caste (untouchables), which means they are from the
poorest families in Pokhara. The majority of the children turn up to school
having not eaten anything and with no lunch, and will not eat until 8pm until
the evening. I do not need to tell you how difficult it is to try and get the
attention of a hungry child. This is vital for their education and development.
And finally, the
Street Kids. We are currently providing
6,000 rupees a month to contribute to their food (meat, eggs, vegetables) costs, and I'm so excited to
say that we are not able to double this and give them 12,000 a month!!!! There
are 12 kids there, which if you've seen how much Nepali kids can eat amounts to
a LOT of food!
We will also be providing them with a new stove, as the old
one has pretty much had it, new kitchen utensils, new blankets (this was a last
minute idea as I was there the other day when they were having a clean out and
was horrified by the state of their blankets, I know I wouldn't wan to sleep with
them so I don't see why they should!), new bed sheets and the thing I am most
excited about an inverter (battery to power lights). Currently when the
electric is off (which it is approximately 16 hours a day!), the kids have to
use candles in the evenings which I personally think is extremely dangerous for
a group of children to be responsible for. This inverter means that we can put
a light in the bedrooms, the kitchen and the outside area where they all sit
which will work even if there is no electricity. When I told Ashmita (the girl
from the center) that I was brining an inverter round, she was SO excited went
running to Ama (the mother) and said 'now I can read and study in the evenings,
I am SO happy!'. This was music to my ears!
With the money that we currently have available it also
means that for our monthly donations we can commit for the next two years which
is absolutely incredible.
I would like to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone involved
in the PoD Charity. Bring 'on the ground' here I get to witness first hand how
much of a difference this money will make, and it's true that a little goes a
long way and there is always more that come be done.
If you would like to help us continue this fantastic work
then please follow this link to the
PoD Charity page. Once again, a big thanks
from myself and all the children who we work with in Pokhara.
Early last week, I received a phone call from the Chairman
of the Street Kids Center to inform me that Bidan, one
of the children, was sick and suffering from Small Pox. A little worried, I
started googling Small Pox and hoped that he had made a mistake, and actually
meant Chicken Pox - which is in fact what it turned out to be. He was off
school for about a week, but is doing better now, and none of the other
children got infected. We asked them about chicken pox, some remembered having
it but some didn't know whether or not they had it before. However, a few of
our adult volunteers are now not going for a few weeks as they have never had
the infection before and it is more serious in adults than children. 
