CELEBRATING THE OPENING OF THE FIRST IYH SCHOOL!

We would like to share the fantastic day when IYH opened their first school. GHORKA PRIMARY school was completely destroyed in the earthquake of 2015 in Nepal. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters we have been able to completely rebuild the school. This school is for up to 135 primary school children.  80% of the pupils are Dalit ( the lowest social cast) and 20% are Chepang.  The Chepang are an indigenous tribe and like the Dalit they are extremely poor.  Whilst the school is not in as remote an area as the other schools we are supporting it would have been low on the list to receive immediate help for many cultural reasons. The opening showed us that they are more than grateful to be treated as special. Money and time well spent on children who want to learn.

The school will be twinned with two schools from Liverpool who can boast being Centres of Excellence for foreign languages. They are BLESSED SACRAMENT & BARLOWS. We are awaiting formal confirmation but are quietly confident. Jane Halsall who is responsible for recruiting these schools to help our projects is also our IYH Education Ambassador.  Jane got involved and before she knew it she was out in Nepal with her daughter Nina (nutrition expert) for a week with Jo. By the end of the week they had added so much to our team we consider them both to be essential members of our IYH family.

Jo, Jane and Nina were essential to the success of our opening day at GHORKA. Jane is amodern languages teacher and managed to show how much fun can be had teaching children English without saying a word in Nepalese. She had them running, dancing, singing and speaking English while laughing. Jo and Nina were her helpers and between them they turned an opening ceremony into a fun teaching day.

A huge mention needs to go to our partners at The Mandala Organisation. Mahendra Shing Thapa, Milan Tamang and Shanta Nepali. There is no way we could have achieved any of our goals without them. They have been responsible for co-ordinating the building and helping us to understand the needs or the children in this area.

We are currently researching how to fund a food project to feed each child a proper meal at school each day. This is an area in Nepal that suffers from nutrition problems. In addition to helping the children concentrate on learning while at school rather than on an empty stomach it will also help to encourage the parents to send the children to school.  It costs approximately 10p per child per day to provide a nutritious meal.  If anybody would like to get involved or would like to sponsor this project please contact us.

We are hoping that a couple of volunteer teachers will be with GHORKA school from September to December 2016 and regularly thereafter. If you are interested in volunteering please see our 'Volunteer Teacher Information' page.

Posted by: at 9:16 am on February 21st, 2016