We want to participate in the following, not yet (fully) finalized, DMG projects:

1. The purchase of materials such as textbooks, notebooks, pens, pencils.

2. The purchase of musical instruments.

3. The purchase of sports equipment such as football and chess games.

4. The appointment of an English teacher.

5. The appointment of a part-time secretary for DMG.

We also continue our support for:

1. The family, for which we finance the school education in Kathmandu. The two girls, Doma and Yangyi, now go to the Himalayan International Model School (HIMS). The boy, Phuri, left school at the end of 2012. In February 2013 he married. He lives with his wife in Duble.
This is our core activity and it is guaranteed, for at least the period that the children need, to finish their schools.

2. Purchase of school needs for the poorest students of the Jana Jyoti school.
This activity is guaranteed, for a minimum of 5 years, for 22 children.

3. Quality improvement of the school in Duble by reimbursing teachers the costs of training courses.

4. Extending the school with vocational training courses in agriculture and animal husbandry.
This should still be discussed with DMG. At the moment they prefer an extension to 10 classes.
This we try to give more body in 2013/2014.

5. Electricity, enough for a few hours light per day.
Everywhere in rural areas, where there is no electricity, this is a hot item for discussion. In such areas you may see the use of solar panels and small hydroelectric powerstations, so called pico-powerstations. In Europe you may come across these pico-powerstations in the Alps, near remote mountain huts.
In Duble there was much talk about the possible construction of such a pico-hydroelectric powerstation locally. We therefore looked into the local situation and wrote a report in which we gave technical background information and an estimate of how much the project, including distribution system, would probably cost. This Pico-Hydro-Report is available as a PDF document. Following discussions in the village, the villagers concluded that they could not afford the project financially and that they feared for the consequences of lightning in the distribution network. So we switched from hydro to solar energy. We provided some 25 households with solar kits; 10 received a 5 Watt installation and 15 a 21 Watt installation. Furthermore, 13 households also got an improved stove as well as the solar panel.
We will decide how to proceed with this activity when we have completed an evaluation process.

For completeness we mention the rejected proposal to sponsor school uniforms, so that we do not need to discuss this item again. We can imagine that parents would like clothes for their children, but a school uniform adds nothing to the quality of education. The situation is different when the parents are extremely poor or when you have a child going to school in Kathmandu. There the school prescribes uniforms (a wardrobe).