Activities:

The most important activities of our foundation are those that that provide a direct and structural contribution to the improvement of future living conditions in a specific mountainous region in Nepal. We do this on the basis of wishes expressed by the local population and taking into account local culture.

Helping the people can be done in several manners, but the main thrust of our activities concerns the provision of a decent education to the children of the village Duble and surrounding area. There are two schools in this region namely the Jana Jyoti Primary School in Duble, with 120 (2013) pupils, and the Shree Demba Primary School in Bhitte, with 37 pupils.

Look here for information about these 2 rural schools.

For general information about the Nepalese education system look here.

The present site provides complete openness in respect of how we spend any funds received by the foundation. This same openness we demand from the local people who actually carry out our projects. Where practicable we receive copies of the invoices and receipts involved. (However, since the boarding school has a published schedule of fees we do not insist on viewing the accounts kept by the boarding house). Furthermore, we make it patently clear that we want no part in any corrupt practices.

Fortunately, we are not the only people who are trying to improve the prospects of the people in Duble and surrounding area. Here you will find a list of (Dutch) organisations that have activities in the same region.

Our current projects

1. Two children are sponsored to attend a good boarding school in Kathmandu,

2. We assist 22 of the neediest children with the purchase of school requisites.

3. We provide some financial assistance to one of the teachers at the Duble school until the school board will be able to pay him an adequate salary from their own sources. This was possible in 2009. Since then we use this money to support the secretarial activities of DMG.

4. Since we want to put all funds received to work as soon as possible, we also carry out projects that are not necessarily directly related to education but that concern improvements in the general living conditions. However, these activities no doubt have a beneficial affect on academic achievements as well. For instance, we recently provided 10 solar panels of 5W, 15 solar panels of 21W and 13 iron externally-fueled stoves, to the parents/carers of schoolchildren. (See news item 20090216).
Other people are standing in line for similar support. This support will come in 2013. We will give 25 new solarpanels.

5. On an ad-hoc basis we donate playing equipment and teaching requisites for the whole school. This concerns such items as foot and volley balls, volley ball nets, and badminton sets. ( examples)

The above mentioned activities are the ones we believe we will be able to support well into the future. However, we would like to help the Nepalese people with some other activities as well but for any bigger projects we too require some assistance. In the following we present a number of ideas for projects, which we consider important and, with the assistance of other organisations, achievable.

In our aim to improve the standard of teaching at the Duble school, we see a need for the further education of the teaching staff.
Furthermore, we would like to see an expansion of the curriculum and in particular, courses in the agricultural and animal husbandry areas.
However, such an expansion of our program would be irresponsible unless we were able to guarantee the necessary funds for for instance any extra teachers required, for a period of say at least 5 years. At present we are unable to provide such a guarantee.

Some very recent short-term projects, which we proposed in 2010, are:

1. a 'Health Awareness' project, that was performed in December 2011 and will be repeated in 2013.

2. an educational project for the farmers, that was started in February 2012. We will report further about this project in our News section.

In the selection and execution of our projects we work closely together with representatives of the local population through the Duble Milijuli Group (DMG).
Rather than just handing out money, we are actively involved in the decision making process while at the same time, we aim to raise the level of self-sufficiency amongst the local population.
Thus the projects emanating from the DMG are especially important to us.
Of these, we would like to give our highest priority to the improvement of the school toilets. If children are taught the importance of hygeine at school but are not given the proper facilities to practice what they learned how do you expect them to apply such methods at home?

During treks, there is always lots of time for conversations. With a bit of luck one sometimes meets local people who can make themselves understood in English and are able to explain aspects of the local culture and inform you of the problems faced by the local people. From the information gleaned from such conversations together with the information received from the DMG we have prepared our project proposals.

To realise the aforementioned improvements to the level of education we need further donations.
The inhabitants of Duble and surrounding area would welcome your assistance.

Any donations received by us will of course be acknowledged by means of an official receipt and thank you letter.