19 People, a Goat and a Jeep

This week’s title refers to the luxurious travel arrangements our volunteers found themselves in this week, but more of that later.  So, we have largely just been enjoying life lately.  This week was the climax of the Dashain festival so we have been joining in with the festivities and generally finding time to cram in all of the fun that Nepal has to offer.  Oh, and of course we have still been doing a little bit of work.

Aine's welcome to Lakeside

We have had two new team members arrive, Aine and Liz.  Aine narrowly missed out on one of the best arrivals in Lakeside ever.  When I arrived at the bus park to pick her up, the whole place had been decked out in bunting and banana trees to celebrate ‘World Tourism Day’.  As tourists stumbled off their busses after 7 hours of being jiggled and bounced around  on the road from Kathmandu, hoards of local hotel owner and businessmen rushed towards them to cover them in flower garlands and hand out gifts whilst being accompanied by traditional musicians.  Unfortunately, Aine’s bus was one of the last to arrive and so all flowers, gifts and enthusiasm had long gone and she just got me standing in a dusty bus park with flags flapping around the place.

Aine is an Occupational Therapist who is working with individuals with physical disabilities in the community and will be moving on to support SCIAN full time after the Dashain holidays.  The lack of services, systems and equipment is making her work here very challenging, but undaunted, Aine is simply setting off to buy wood, saws and all sorts of other things to design and build her own aides.  She certainly is a very inspirational and compassionate lady!  Liz is a qualified teacher from home who arrived on what is the equivalent of Christmas Eve here and so hasn’t started volunteering just yet, but it looks like she is going to be the first volunteer at our newest placement, Shree Dipya Jyoti Primary School.  This is a government school that is a bus ride out of Lakeside and has never had a volunteer before.  Exciting times!

Campfire songs whilst cooking their goat

We all headed off to the Street Kids’ Centre for our regular session there this week and made it just in time to see them slaughter their Dashain dinner.  Members of the committee, the house mum and four boys who had no family to visit over the holidays were at the centre with a very handsome goat.  Unfortunately for the goat, he had his head chopped off and was cleaned, filleted and cooked up within about an hour.  The rest of us, however, had a lovely celebration.  The committee provided us with some beer to drink and extremely fresh meat to eat so we ate, drank and enjoyed being included in the festivities.

Nishma and I have started sessions at SOS Bahini, (‘Bahini’ means ‘little sister’ in Nepali), a fantastic local organisation that we have just started to work with.  They work with disadvantaged and at risk women and girls from all over Nepal.  They provide accommodation, support, health care, education and training for their ladies in order to empower them to take control of their own lives, something that is often difficult in such a patriarchal society.  Our contribution to their great work is to offer conversational English classes to the girls in their final years at school.  The aim is that by getting the girls more comfortable with expressing themselves in English, they will stand a better chance at getting international scholarships to study in the future.  We are really excited and privileged to be able to work with this organisation and look forward to where this will take us and the girls.

Bandipur High Street

Other than that, work has been thin on the ground this week and so we have been finding other ways to keep ourselves busy.  There was a group trip to Bandipur, a stunningly beautiful hilltop town between Pokhara and Kathmandu, definitely somewhere that every volunteers should visit (this is where the packed jeep trip came in!).  Reta and Marilyn set off on a ‘Royal Trek’ and came back with some amazing stories and photos.  Nishma is still on a 5 day trek up to Poon Hill.  Sarah and Aine have been hiring bikes and cycling around the lake and to Zumba classes.  They have also been swatting up on their Nepali skills with classes at the Cosmic Brontosaurus and have been joined there by Liz who is keen to squeeze in as much learning as she can before heading off to work next week.  We had a street festival here with live concert, everyone went off to the Bat Caves and hiked up to the World Peace Pagoda for some stunning views of the Annupurna Mountain range.  Oh, and Aine has joined the church band and has been treating us to some wonderful music sessions at the Silk Road. Phew!  There was probably more going on, but I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

And that’s about it for this week.  We’re back to work from the middle of next week until the next big holiday at the end of October so will be sure to keep you updated.

If you would like to join our team and help with the good work we are doing in Nepal, please contact the UK office for more information on how to book.

Holidays are coming!

Hello there everyone, how are you?  So, as always we are all very happy here and have lots to share with you!  Firstly, our team is growing.  Reta and Marilyn have arrived, fitting in very nicely in the team and getting stuck right into work.  Reta is at Ward 6 taking care of the little ones and Marilyn has joined Nishma at Shree Krishna Secondary School. 

Sarah, Nishma and Reta planning their adventures!

We are starting to see the beginnings of the Dashain festival here, this is the major festival in Nepal where everything stops so everyone can travel home to visit their families.  We’re not quite at that stage just yet, but we have started to see cars, trucks, busses and motorbikes decorated with bright, colourful ribbons.  Schools will also close for Dashain so our volunteers are busy planning what to do with their hard earned time off.  Some of it will be spent visiting the children living in orphanages and some will be spent exploring Nepal.  Marilyn seems to be the adrenaline junkie of the group and is looking at white water rafting and trekking, Reta is planning on a jungle safari and everyone is heading to Bandipur, an amazingly beautiful hilltop town not so far from Pokhara.

But, school’s not out just yet and so we are still hard at work here.  Sarah has been getting on leaps and bounds at Annurpurna Primary School, putting her UK teaching skills and experience to the test!  I joined her for her first class when she introduced the idea of a weather board.  The children were asked to choose the weather symbol that best described the weather that day and stick it on the board.  They rightly chose ‘cloudy’ and fixed it in the right place, but as we were leaving class all of the children were crowding around the board and starting to take it down.  We marched back in telling them not to play with it and then had to retreat as they explained that the sun had now come out and so they were merely updating the board.  Fantastic initiative I feel!

Sarah has also introduced the concept of ‘phonics’ to APS, something that is not routinely taught in Nepali schools.  Children learn their ABC and learn how to spell and recognise certain words, but they struggle to read new words as they don’t know how to sound out what they are reading.  Not only is this improving the children’s reading skills, but the teachers and parents are also getting on board with it, sitting in on classes, taking notes and learning to read.  Hopefully, this is the start of a long lasting change for the children there.

Brotherly love at the Street Kids Centre

Our visits to the Street Kids’ just keep getting better and better.  Not only do the children behave marvellously well for us, but they are so nice with each other!  Always sharing and caring between themselves.  Really heart warming stuff.  We had a lovely session there making friendship bands.  We arrived armed with a ‘how to make friendship bracelets’ book and a few hours practice under our belt ready to teach them.  Turns out our efforts were unnecessary as all they needed was the thread and they were away churning out designs far more complex than anything we had planned!

We are having a week off from the Asha Foundation this week as it is exam time for them.  The older girls told us it was better they used Friday to study rather than play.  This met with some dissent from the younger ones, but they were overruled!

Shree Krishna Secondary School is delighted to have two volunteers at the moment.  Nishma is starting to get her own classes to teach and seems to be in high demand – children come searching for her and request her to teach them!  Marilyn is also working here now and is specialising in science.  Until now, children and staff learn and teach science from the textbook.  Marilyn has been astounding her charges with practical demonstrations and experiments and really igniting an interest in science.

Last but not least, Reta has been doing fantastically well at Ward 6.  She is an absolute trooper untroubled by the temper tantrums, the sickness and general chaos surrounding her.  She is carrying on with our mission to get the centre a little more hygienic by making sure all hands are washed prior to eating and after the toilet.  Her laid back, no nonsense manner is just what’s needed here.

Momo Chefs Nishma and Marilyn

In other news, we are all now very pleased to call ourselves momo chefs.  We spent a highly enjoyable afternoon at the Silk Road playing golf, drinking cold drinks and learning to make vegetable and cheese momos.  We got into quite a mess and never quite mastered the technique, all of our momos came out slightly mis-shaped.  Actually, totally deformed is a better description, but they tasted amazing all the same and a good time was had by all!

 Advice for future volunteers

·         A Frisbee and / or water pistols would be great resources to bring out for fun sessions.

·         We really need some small whiteboards to use when teaching younger children who can’t reach the board.   They don’t need to be high quality, flimsy ones are fine!

Our tasty - if slightly mishapen - momos

·         Think about the skills you already have and whether or not they could be developed or used here, for example if you are a first aider, could you develop this so that you are in a position to train placement staff over here?  

PoD Nepal needs you!

Swings are built to celebrate upcoming Dashain

 

So let’s start with news of the PoD Team.  Since I last wrote, we have said goodbye to both Jane and Sarah which was sad, but sweetened up a little by fun and fond farewells from the placements.  Nishma arrived in Pokhara last Monday and was all alone for 10 days!  She is now very happy to have the company of Sarah (another Sarah), who arrived yesterday, remarkably cheery and bouncy after her long, windy and hot bus ride from Kathmanudu.  It seems as though ‘alone time’ for any of the PoD Team is going be a rarity for the next few weeks as we due to be fully booked with volunteers until the end of October!  This is most exciting as there are some major festivals coming up in Nepal and so we will have lots of new friends to celebrate with.

So, first things first.  We need your help.  We at PoD Nepal have spent a long time working with projects in Pokhara and are keen to develop our existing services here by complimenting our voluntary work with some practical support for placements.  We have spent the past few months consulting with project staff and PoD volunteers and drawing upon our own experiences to identify what resources, equipment and supplies would most improve the quality of life for the people we work with.  Our wish list includes – but is most certainly not limited to – whiteboards for all of the schools we work with, a new roof for the Street Kids’s Centre, funding towards a vocational training and independent living centre at SCIAN, funding for excursions with clients, furnishings for the Asha Foundation’s new home, funding for midday snacks at APS, an educational sponsorship to get one of SCIAN’s clients back into school...the list goes on! 

Obviously, to provide these items we need money, and that’s where you come in... We need around 6,000GBP to fund everything on our list, this is undoubtedly a big amount, but most definitely attainable.  I’ve been chatting to some past volunteers recently and have heard of a few fundraising plans in the pipeline – the SOAS University Great Dumpling Exchange sounds like a particularly tasty and effective way to raise some money!  Join our facebook discussion to share your fundraising ideas or successes.  You can also check our fundraising page to donate or see how much we have raised so far.  Of course, we will be sure to keep you updated on where you money is going and if you email me and let me know how much you raised and how, I will give a special PoD Nepal Blog mention – you really don’t get more prestigious than that!

Morning exercises at Shree Krishna - and a late arrival at the back!

So, back to this week.  Nishma has been hard at work volunteering at Shree Krishna Lower Secondary School, teaching children of all ages and abilities.  She has a timetable to follow and has been officially paired up with Bedhari, the school’s head English teacher.  However, this being Nepal, there hasn’t been an awful lot of structure to her week!  There was a random school holiday one day, another day all of the female teachers left to visit a colleague and her new baby for the afternoon (leaving 2 male teachers and Nishma running the school), and yet another day where there just didn’t seem to be all that many teachers around.  Despite this, there has been no slacking on Miss Nishma’s watch and her classes have been running as normal, much to the disappointment of some of her charges!  That said, she has been brightening up the days with some song and dance classes which have been going down a storm.  All in all, good times are being had by all.

It was all change for me at Annupurna Primary School this week.  I took Class 1 for the first time and spent a lot of time teaching the letters A, B and C.  To avoid the session becoming repetitive, we had a big class treasure hunt for the different letters which was chaotic, but lots of fun!  For the first time in a very long time, the school have no volunteers teaching there, but no worries, this is soon to be rectified by Sarah, our new volunteer who will start on Monday.  She is a qualified teacher in the UK so she should settle in quickly enough and start to make a real difference there.

Little ones at the Asha Foundation

Our trip to the Asha Foundation this week was a little bit uneventful.  We had prepared a great session for making colourful, glittery, sparkly mobiles for the children to hang above their beds.  However, when we got there, all of the children were out!  Three of the smallest children were home and being taken care of by one of the older boys.  We sat with them, did some colouring and watched Nepali movies against the backdrop of mountains and rice paddies.  Not quite the session we had in mind, but a nice enough way to spend the afternoon.

Our mobile making project was, however, a great success at the Street Kids’ Centre.  Well, it was once we backtracked and explained that the mobiles we would be making were actually made of wood, string and paper and for decorating their rooms and not, as they had initially understood, mobile telephones..! It was particularly heart warming to see that all of the three recent arrivals are still here and appearing to be settling in well (there are high incidences new arrivals running away).  It’s also interesting and encouraging to see how their attitudes have already changed after just 3 weeks.  During our first session with them, they were desperately snatching at everything and begging for us to let them keep every little scrap of paper or pencil.  This is common behaviour in new arrivals who are used to having to grab what they can, where they can.  Now, after realising that they are being, and will continue to be, well cared and provided for, they are much calmer and less concerned with collecting and saving everything.  This is a great step and testament to the fantastic work of the centre staff.

Lakeside scene

And so I think that’s about it for this week.  We’re enjoying life here as always and looking forward to the next few weeks which will see the arrival of a very many new volunteers, some great festivals in Nepal and hopefully the start of some busy fundraising activities by you guys!

 Tips and suggestions for future volunteers

·         Mini whiteboards would be a great thing to bring.  Just one or two would be really helpful, particularly when running interactive sessions with smaller kids who can’t reach the board at the front of the class!

·         We really need some zip lock style sandwich bags of different sizes.  At the moment we have a huge supply of glitter, stickers, sequins, googly eyes and various other craft materials, and it’s very hard to get them to our sessions without them spilling out all over the place!  Sandwich bags would be perfect for dividing them up and transporting them.

·         Research what there is to do in Lakeside and plan and budget accordingly.  This way you will be sure to make the most of your time off.

If you want to join our team in Nepal, contact Becky in the PoD UK office Becky@podvolunter.org or by phone, 0044 (0)1242 250 901

Village Life!

Access to the village is over this
stunning footbridge

So, our first ever Bhalam Village volunteer has just completed her placement and, all sides agree, it was a resounding success.  Whilst staff from PoD and the school had spent a lot of time preparing and planning for volunteers, neither us, nor they, nor Louise really knew what we were getting into.  Now, thanks to our wonderful guinea pig, we are able to give you a bit more information about living and working in rural Nepal and hopefully inspire some of you to step up and contribute to a truly worthwhile project.

A typical day in the village is as follows:

·         5.30am – Wake up and drink tea with the family.  The household rises early to make the most of daylight hours.  Chores are done early on in the day.

·         9am – First dal bhat of the day. 

·         9.30am – Go to school

·         1pm or thereabouts, until 1.45 – The school provides the volunteer with snacks for lunch

·         4.30pm – Return home for ‘tiffin’ time.  This is more snacks and is usually popcorn or noodles with tea.

·         9pm – Evening dal bhat followed quickly by bedtime.

The Chhetri Family

What, you may be thinking, is 'dal bhat’?  Good question, it is the national dish here consistin of a lot of rice, lentils and then various pickles and curries to make each meal a little different.  Food is mainly provided by your host family, the Chhetri’s, although most of the village with most likely try to feed you at some point!  Many of the family members speak English, however, communication with mum and older family members can sometimes be challenging.  Just make sure you take a phrase book and are ready to conduct conversations in sign language!

The Chhetri family kitchen

Village life offers little in the way of home comforts and conditions outside of the home can take some getting used to.  There is no hot water, the toilet and shower are outside and there is no toilet paper.  In the summer months there are many insects to deal with and in wet times leeches are not uncommon.  There is a power supply and internet access in the village, however this is sporadic and unreliable (power can be out for days at a time).  All of these trials and tribulations, however, are surmountable and merely add to the sense of adventure.

At weekends you are welcome to come back to Lakeside to meet with PoD staff and other volunteers, but if you do choose to stay in Bhalam, there is plenty to keep you amused there.  A 30 minute, steep ascent on foot takes you up to a temple which gives stunning views over Pokhara and beyond.  From there you can explore the highest parts of the area. You can also walk to Old Pokhara quite easily from Bhalam.  A taxi from the bridge to Lakeside should be no more than 300 rupees and many buses go from the main road to Lakeside.

School photo

You will work at Shree Bhalam Community Primary, a small and overwhelmingly friendly and welcoming school.  There are 5 classes from nursery to class 3 with an average of about 9 children in each.  There is a sense of order and calm amongst these pupils that will not be found in our city schools!  Thankfully, this seems to arise out of a sense of respect rather than being something forced upon children through harsh disciplinary measures.

You can expect to be thrown in at the deep end and just handed a class to teach alone.  Teachers are on hand and all have at least basic English, some are more proficient.  Many of the teaching staff are new to the profession and are willing and eager to learn new methods, techniques and ideas.  This means there is the scope for you to broaden your role to include some teacher training sessions and thus leave a more lasting impression on the school.

Bhalam high street!

Thanks to Louise’s hard work and positive attitude, the community in Bhalam are eager to welcome more PoD volunteers into their lives.  As such, your arrival in Bhalam will be treated as a ‘big deal’ by staff, pupils and the community.  You have big shoes to fill, so to make sure you are up to the challenge, we have come up with the following hints on how to prepare for village life.

·         If you are not a qualified teacher we recommend that you take some sort of teaching course before volunteering in the village.  You will not have access to the support that city volunteers have, thus, you need to be capable and confident at lesson planning, making resources and running sessions independently.

·         You should consider taking a short Nepali course before leaving for the village.  If you are able to communicate at a basic level in Nepali, you will find more friendships and opportunities will open up to you than would be possible if they are limited to only talking to people who can speak English.  Classes can be arranged in Pokhara and can be completed in one or two full days of tuition (these will need to be booked in advance to make sure the teacher is available).  Spending a few days in Pokhara will also give you the chance to acclimatise to Nepal and get to know other volunteers and staff.

·         Pack well!  PoD can give you ideas on what to pack in order to make your life in Bhalam as comfortable as possible.

Ultimately, living and working in the village gives you a unique opportunity to experience Nepal at its best.  You will immediately become part of a very special, welcoming community and be fully immersed in Nepali culture and family, something which is very difficult to do based in Lakeside with all of its pizza houses, foreigners and discos! 

So, does this sound like your kind of thing?  If so, get in touch with Gemma in our UK office to get more information or arrange an interview.  You can also look at our facebook page for more photos of the village, school and accommodation.  We look forward to seeing you soon!

Catching up on the last 2 PoD-weeks!

You know how a dog has seven years for every human year?  I feel like every PoD week is just a day in real life...time goes sooooooooooooooo quickly here!  So, without me even realising it, another 2 weeks have gone by and I haven’t updated anyone.  I had better stop rambling and just get on with telling you about life here hadn’t I???

Bishal, Abisech and Pradip singing at APS

Despite a busy exam schedule, the children at Annurpurna Primary have still been finding the time to work with and enjoy Jane.  She has mostly been working in the nursery class, introducing the little ones to their ABCs and 123s, comforting those still feeling sad when mum or dad drops them off and just generally helping the staff there.  Once the day’s exams are over, the older children also join Jane to play games, sing songs, dance and let off steam after a hard day’s work!  My highlight of the week would have to be the full school hokey-kokey we did with the kids last Monday.  It was very raucous and out of control – I think we scared the smaller children with all of our inning and outing and shaking it all abouting, but on the whole it was just great.

Sarah has been getting on fantastically at Ward 6.  Every day she is in charge of ‘reading time’ with the children.  The staff support the session by keeping everyone quiet and settled whilst Sarah reads aloud to them.  They are running a bit low on new reading material, mostly because the children are ripping up the books, but regardless of the reasons, we are going to arrange for some new children’s books to be donated there. 

One boy at Ward 6 has been showing some particularly aggressive and violent behaviour towards both staff and children.  The staff seem to largely ignore this, resigned to the fact that he is ‘a naughty boy’, however, Sarah has been working hard at modifying this behaviour by using techniques and understandings she has from her work as a Teaching Assistant in the UK.  It is hoped that the staff will pick up on these methods and continue using them after she has left and with children in the future.

Teachers keen to learn at Bhalam

We had a fantastic session at Shree Bhalam Primary School last week.  Louise, our first ever volunteer at the village, is a qualified teacher in the UK and so made great use of her skills and experience by not only teaching the children, but by providing training for staff.  This was an ongoing process throughout the duration of her placement, however, on her final day we travelled there as a team and delivered a training session on how to plan and run interactive classes and make good use of resources.  We were conscious that the school has little budget for or access to specialist resources, so with this in mind we took along a selection of our own homemade resources to demonstrate what can be done with a few bits of paper and coloured pens.  The feedback from the session was great and the school and host family couldn’t say enough good things about Louise.  They are all desperate for another PoD volunteer, so if you think you are up to the challenge of village life, let us know!

There were three new arrivals at the Street Kids which was a little bit tough because new boys are generally hard work.  They want to show off, assert their position in the group and grab all of our resources.  This is largely because they are used to having to take what they can, where they can and are not yet used to the confines and comforts of life in a home.  Thankfully, there were enough of our regular children there to set an example for them.  If the new boys tried to take something away, the other children pulled them back and made them use the resources at the table.  One of the boys started to ‘showcase’ by singing and prancing about.  Sarah turned this around beautifully by getting him to teach her the song, this engaged him and stopped him disrupting the session.  That meant that we could all get on with making spinning tops, a brilliant idea of Jane’s.

Happy faces at Asha

We also took our spinning top project to the Asha Foundation this week.  It was a resounding success there, everyone was decorating and modifying their top for the best aesthetics and performance.  We had children sharpening their sticks, weighting their tops, polishing surfaces...it was quite the operation!  We also spent time watching some ‘Teej’ songs on DVD.  Teej is an upcoming festival celebrated by women in Nepal and we are looking forward to joining in with some dancing, clapping and general merriment in the next week.

Jane and I had a brilliant session at SCIAN.  Our regular client there, Esther, again managed a full introductory conversation which was fab.  She was joined this week by another of SCIAN’s clients who is staying with her for a few weeks whilst completing a vocational training programme.  This meant we could have a more interactive session with both students working together.  We taught the ladies various body parts and then set up a ‘Simon says’ competition between them.  What was particularly good about this was the confidence boost it gave to Esther.  Her English skills were clearer higher than those of her friend meaning she generally won each game.  It was great to see how much more confident she grew throughout the session, a big chance for an otherwise extremely shy and meek lady.

Other things that have kept us amused this week have been the 7 a-side football tournament that finished with the victors and all of their supporters careening around town on their motorcycles, waving flags, trophies, banners, football tops and cheering, screaming and singing in celebration.  Jane got a smile and some enthusiasm from a child who has been glum and disengaged in sessions so far.  Sarah has been making friends all over town by striking up conversations with random folk in bookshops, restaurants, cafes...she has also been making friends with some local people, teaching English to new Nepali guides whilst kayaking on the lake.  This is a great way to get the most out of Lakeside, taking advantage of the many activities available and getting to know the local community at the same time.

Tips and advice for future volunteers

·         Prepare for your placement.  If you are planning to teach, really think about and research effective teaching methods, lesson ideas, resources and classroom management techniques.  If you arrive at your placement unprepared it will be uncomfortable and difficult for you, but more importantly it will damage the education of those you have travelled here to support.  If you need ideas or guidance on where to find such information, talk to us!

·         We could really do with some new books.  We have a fair few basic books for young children and complete beginners, however, we work with several children who are quite proficient at English and could benefit from something more complicated.  If you are coming to join us anytime soon, try to bring some story books aimed at children aged around 7-10 that have good stories, but simple language and short paragraphs.

If you would like to join our team and help with the good work we are doing in Nepal, please contact the UK office for more information on how to book.  If you want to hear about what past volunteers have to say, visit our testimonials page.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Lovely times in Nepal!

Yes, lovely.  I think that that is the best word to describe our week in Pod Nepal-land this week.  We have had some new team members arrive and some really positive, productive and enjoyable sessions at our placements too. 

We may as well start with introducing our new team members, Sarah from the UK and Jane from Singapore.  The girls met each other at the airport in Kathmandu, did a bit of exploring in the capital together before getting a bus to Pokhara the next day.  Despite bumping, twisting and sweating their way through Nepal for 7 hours, they were still fresh and enthusiastic enough to get stuck right into volunteering at the Street Kids Centre that afternoon. 

Getting wet at the Street Kids Centre

Our time with the Street Kids went well with all of the children happy to see us, welcoming the new faces and joining in with our activities (no, this is not always the case!).  Alongside some creative activities there was also some learning and testing going on, although we were the ones getting tested!  Sarah discovered very quickly that she is not, in fact, smarter than a 10 year old.  One of the centre’s neighbours came in to quiz her on a range of topics including spelling (amphibian) and geography (name the longest river in China?), Sarah let him down with her answers...Jane became an instant superstar with her gift of two water pistols.  The children took turns with the pistols whilst others improvised grabbing buckets, cups etc. to soak their brothers with.  Most joined in and everyone got wet.  Good times.

Sarah started volunteering at Ward 6 who were delighted to have another PoD volunteer with them.  She had a challenging first day dealing with first day nerves and crying children.  On a more serious note, it was difficult to witness how roughly the children are handled by staff and so we have had to come up with some ways by which Sarah can lead by example and make it clear that children do not need to be smacked.  In more positive news though, overall the staff were friendly and welcoming and kept Sarah busy throughout the day.  She was even handed some flash cards hand made by previous PoD volunteers to work with the children with!

We also had an encouraging time with Esther at SCIAN who demonstrated the full extent of her new found English skills.  She was able to have a complete introductory conversation with Sarah, something she wouldn’t have even been able to begin 6 months ago.  It was really good to see such huge progress which reflects both her hard work and the effort put in by us PoD folk.  Despite wanting to build further on her English, her room was simply too hot and stuffy to stay in, so we went out for a walk around the local area, visited a temple and popped in to SCIAN's vocational training centre.  Here we met with Hari Krishna, the organisation's founder, who brought us up to date with their latest training programme.  He has brought 25 physically disabled people from all over Nepal to receive training in bag making using sewing machines.  Each trainee is provided with accommodation, food and training for 3 months in Pokhara, but most importantly, they get the opportunity to seek paid employment and thus finanacial independence in the future.  Unfortunately, persistant discriminatory and prejudiced attitudes often hampers this groups efforts at finding employment.  Thus, Hari's next dream is to rent and furnish a shop in which his trainees can work, develop their skills and earn money.  We wish him the best of luck and hope to be able to offer support with this in the near future.

Look at that concentration!

We are pleased to report that our ‘good behaviour programme’ at Annurpurna Primary School seems to be a runaway success.   We developed this for two reasons; firstly to gain control of a raucous bunch of kids and secondly to encourage struggling students to get involved and pay attention.  We start each session by getting each child to write their name on the board and each time they behave well or are helpful or try very hard they get a point.  At the end of the class the children line up in order of how many points they have, and whoever got the most points gets the first choice of sticker, second place gets second choice and so on.  This week I forgot the stickers and owned up to this in the first few minutes of the class and then panicked that my class would subsequently be a disaster, but the children simply shrugged their shoulders and still behaved as if their stickers were at stake.  In addition ensuring classes are not interrupted by constantly having to tell children to sit down, listen, don’t fight, no, it’s definitely not breaktime yet...we have seen some really huge changes in the effort levels of children who were previously dismissed as ‘no good’.  Now that they know they can be rewarded for trying, regardless of their results, they are getting more involved in class and subsequently their marks are increasing.  Fab.

Other than that we have been making many phone calls to Louise our volunteer doing some fab work at our rural placement up in Bhalam Village.  We are planning a teacher training session for staff there which will hopefully be fun and informative for all involved and contribute to the longer term development of the school.  Jane and Sarah have also been getting themselves settled well into Lakeside, floating around the lake on a wooden boat and helping some trainee raft guides practice their English.  See, I told you we have had a lovely week!

 

Tips for upcoming volunteers

·         We could really do with some more stickers, if you are coming to Nepal please bring some bright, small, colourful stickers of different varieties.

·         Sticky backed plastic would be a great resource to have to ‘laminate’ our resources and protect them from sticky fingers.

·         Bring a torch with you – Pokhara’s roads are uneven, often flooded and dark at night!

If you would like to join our team and help with the good work we are doing in Nepal, please contact Gemma the UK office for more information on how to book.

Long time no speak!

Well hello there everyone, sorry for the long delay since my last update, I’ll try to make up for it with an information packed blog this week!

Tom's farewell

So, as always there has been a fair bit of chopping and changing with our team members.  We said goodbye to Kari and Tom who have served Nepal well with their great work.  Tom was treated to the full works of a goodbye from Annurpurna Primary, singing, dancing, red powder all over his face, flowers, treats...as always, this kind of party was good fun but tough because it’s the end of a mini-era.  Kari had a much more reserved, though no less meaningful send off from Shree Krishna.  Hers was conducted in the staff room with just a smudge of red powder from the Head Teacher and a snack of the finest biscuits available.  Nice!

We also said hello to Louise who has wasted no time in getting herself off to and settled in Bhalam Village where she is staying in a homestay and working at the local community school there.  We haven’t seen so much of her because she literally flew by Pokhara on her way between Kathmandu and the village and is making the most of her time off by heading off trekking with her host’s daughter.  That said, she seems to be most happy there whenever we talk on the phone and staff at the school have nothing but positive things to say about her.  Louise is a qualified teacher in the UK and so has been supporting and training staff at the school.  As in the other schools we work with, classes here tend to run at the pace set by the textbook and are rarely modified to take into account the levels or needs of the children.  As such, the whole team are planning to head up there next week to support Lousie in delivering a full afternoon’s training at Bhalam focussing on recognising and adapting to the needs of individual within the class.

Shree Krishna school finally opened up after its monsoon holidays and so Kari got a good week of teaching in there.  Despite being a very different environment from which she is used to teaching in at home she had a great time and the children and staff loved having her there.  They were particularly excited by her delivery of stickers for good work and came up with all manner of ingenious methods to try to wheedle extras from her.  The children took advantage of the 40+ class size and general chaos and mayhem within the school to come up for their sticker before promptly rejoining the back of the queue to get another.  This scam was quickly foiled when Kari noticed the torn paper in their exercise books where they had ripped off their previous sticker.  Unfazed by this they simply adapted their plans and rejoined the queue after re-writing their entire class notes out a second time on a fresh page.  Kari was rightly pleased with herself for spotting these underhand dealings, but we suspect that many a child succeeded in taking home an extra sticker or two or three...!

APS Kids writing their letters to the UK

Annurpurna Primary School is also open again now with brand new toilets courtesy of a new government initiative to ensure all schools are suitably hygienic.  Very good news.  They are delighted to have Victoria back again this year, one teacher said she thought she was dreaming when she saw her face!  Victoria also seems to be just as happy to be back with her class and is doing a great job.  We had a lovely session there last week courtesy of Kerra who volunteered at APS earlier this year.  During her time here she got the children to write letters to her class in the UK and a few weeks ago we received replies from them.  We took these letters and photos into the children at APS who were most excited to see their letters on the wall in a school in the UK.  We quickly got to work in sending our own replies to our new found international friends telling them all about ourselves, our time off and our town.   

Our weekly visits to the Asha Foundation are still lots of fun.  Kari took all of the children and some staff to the Mountain Museum on the bus, quite an adventure but most definitely worth it!  We’ve also had a few good sessions at the home.  At the request of the older children we brought along some nail varnish and left with garish blue and red nails.  Some of the older kids had guitar classes from Tom, although these were slightly interrupted by the youngest child, Assim, sneaking up behind them and un-tuning their guitars!  This week we took along some straws and a bottle of washing up liquid, mixed it with water and let the children blow bubbles.  This was most fun but did get slightly out of hand when we realised that there was now slippery washing up liquid ALL over the steps, oops?!  We did clean it up though and everywhere smelled lovely and lemon fresh afterwards...

We have seen some changes at SCIAN too.  One of the ladies we used to work with is now back in full time education which is great news as this has been her main ambition since an accident left her paralysed 5 years ago.  This left us with just one lady to work with, Esther.  Until recently she lived alone, close to SCIAN’s vocational training centre where she is employed as a seamstress.  Last month, however, she was joined by 3 more ladies which makes her life much more sociable and has given us some new friends to work with.  All are keen to spend time with us learning English and sharing our cultures and experiences.  Last week Kari and Philippa took Esther into town for momos and cold drinks.  Not only was this a tasty and fun excursion, it also gave Esther the chance to get out and about somewhere that is difficult for her to get to alone given the wheelchair un-friendly streets of Pokhara!

The Street Kids are still being their usual boisterous entertaining selves, treating us to impromptu displays of acrobatics, singing and dancing.  We had a nice time with them for Kari’s last day sharing biscuits and mango drinks (although the latter were saved for breakfast the next day) and all of the children got a nice new coloured name plate for their beds.  We were a bit sad to see that one of the younger children has now left the centre, but happy to hear that he has been moved to a permanent children’s home down the road.

PoD made worksheets for teaching

Outside of our volunteering hours we have been making new resources to be shared between placements, grading each at a different level to suit different ages and abilities.  We’ve been enjoying the run up to Teej, a Nepali festival in which women all dress up in their finest red saris, paint their hands with elaborate henna and decorate their arms with colourful bangles.  We’ve also spent a lot of time getting wet in big monsoon rains, eating nice cake and relaxing at the Silk Road with live music and amazing cocktails.  That’s about it for this whistlestop tour of the past few weeks of PoD Life.  All that remains is for me to give you some tips about what to bring if you are coming, or thinking of coming soon...

·         We have started to make books and worksheets using pictures from magazines and asking questions about them, i.e. there are 5 people in this picture, how do they know each other, where do they live etc. etc.  If you have any interesting pictures that could prompt a discussion then do bring that.

·         Our crayon and pencil stocks are running low so replenishments for this would be good.

·         A power monkey is good value for charging up mobiles, cameras etc.  for when there is no power – which is fairly often!

If you would like to join our team and help with the good work we are doing in Nepal, please contact the UK office for more information on how to book.