Nepal, New Years Newsletter January 2012

Helly everyone, first of all a happy newyear! With this a small update from Kathmandu.

It is extremely cold here again, you see the fog on the fields around Hamro Gaun in the morning and driving on my motorbike early morning to Sankhu is freezing cold. During the day the sun luckily breaks through and it feels much nicer on the project. But in the Terai which is more south of Kathmandu, it is foggy and freezing 24hours a day which caused the first deaths since the people cannot get warm there anymore, see below

But life goes on, also in Nepal and it was yet again a busy year for Stichting Veldwerk with more and some less good things. Our Hamro Gaun Eco village is almost finished, the last roof tiles are being placed. But that was about time after 5 years of hard work to realise this. The construction of the vocational training center, the farmhouse and the small shop on the roadside, is also almost finished now. It will become a beauty so it was definitely worth the hard work. Also all the running matters are being tuned. The hydropower is getting an update, same as the waterhammer and the biogas installation is being adjusted to work well this winter, even though it gets colder.

The building of the children's home was already finished last year and with this the last children of totally 50 are now entering the home. These children are physically disabled as they also deserve a fair chance to a better future. In the children's home, which already exists for 10 years this year, two of the older boys also moved to independent housing and are now studying in Kathmandu. The 4 oldest boys already succesfully finished their education and are now working daily in a good and paid job. Lal Bhujel is through the Jyoti VTC project (at the initial stages also sponsored by Stichting Veldwerk) qualified as an electrician and he now has a good and paid job in Pokhara. It is beautiful to see how one of our first and small boys is now grown up into an independent person who is supporting even his grandma and grandpa in the very cold terai arera.

The tragic news this year is that our oldest girl, Apsara, got a kidney disease which turned out to be untreatable here in Kathmandu. Unfortunately she passed away because of this, way too young. And life goes on again...

What comes around goes around

The women projects also started running now in Hamro Gaun, an 'advanced tailoring course, a second mushroom farming training, and, "the very tasty mushrooms" have already been harvested. But also awareness trainings for our youngsters and staff; about self consciousness, human trafficking and future perspectives; 'what can I do about my future and what are the themes in this'. TPO, Maiti Nepal and Mountain Child Care supported us in this.

The day care center of Hamro Gaun has been running smoothly for 4 years now. 33 children from the nearby surroundings daily attend the center for their first education. In the last two years twenty of these children already moved to an "normal' government school in the village. This is a big succes and this is the same for the other 8 day care centers in Chitwan, Balaju and Dhading; everyday more than 250 small children now receive education, medication and a healthy meal, besides the safety these centers offer. And this enables their mothers and fathers to earn some money as a day labourer.

Dhading district

Our 6 health posts in Dhading also run much better than expected; every day a 140 patients reach the health posts to receive care, which was unthinkable 3 years ago. And our beautiful centers are now also used for dental camps through the foundation "Handen voor Tanden" and a gynecological camp, realized through the foundation "Women for Women". Especially the last one is extremely important here as almost all women (above 35 years) are dealing with uterus prolapse. And that is very uncomfortable living in such an unhygienic living environment, besides the risk of being socially excluded.

Newly built schools

In the past year we also built 2 new schools, the old buildings were about to collapse and are now replaced with our help. 250 children now have a school to be proud of again. Look at this link on facebook, which gives a nice picture.

EFF

Through our small foundation "Education First Foundation" 145 young students from poor families now receive a scholarship so they are at least able to finish their high school, leading to a respectful future. We are trying to 'push' those students into a vocational training after class 10 as this does not seem easy. They all prefer to go to college to receive a nice diploma that won't be very useful later anyway, as there are not enough jobs available on the market. For this reason EFF recently organized an information day, with teachers of the vocational training centers to inform the 10th graders about their choice of jobs, the (financial) advantages of vocational jobs and the needed studies for this. Meanwhile one of our girls graduated as a nurse and she now has a good job. And the week just before Christmas, our oldest student Rama got a job at Jica, a big and important development organization from Japan that also works in Nepal. So, great successes for these students who initially had no chance. And that gives us the power again to continue.

Mero Niwas

In our small children's home Mero Niwas near the Tibetan border things are going well as well. The first big boys are living partially independent now and soon some of the girls will also start living independently. Next to the fact that they live there comfortable and safe, they also have great school results, so that is great!

The Single Women Group

Also at the Tibetan border we are helping a group of women who are widowers or single, or some handicapped. These women do not fit in with the system and are being left on their own with their children. It is those children who might end up on the streets, in child labour or disappear into prostitution because of a lack of income and care of the mother. The "Single Women Group" is an association of single women who now take care of each other and Stichting Veldwerk helps them with micro credit. In the last year we organized 4 goat trainings with them; every woman received 2 goats to take care of after a 3-day intensive training. The goats multiply rapidly and that's a good source of income with the selling. If we take care of the mother she can take care of her children so they do not end up in the wrong hands. More than 100 women have now received 2 goats, with special thanks to the sponsors of this very special project. See the photo's of the last training, 6th – 8th of December.

Shaky Kathmandu

Last but not least, last September 18th there was an earthquake in Nepal, magnitude 6.8 on the scale of Rigter. In total a 150 people died in India, Nepal and Tibet, but for us it was only a big shock. This is a wake up call for the people of Nepal and we continue with the preparation for the expected bigger quake. The watertower is being strengthened on one side so that, in case of, it will fall to the right side and not onto the girls home. And we now have earthquick alarms, these already went off a few times and the children were outside in no time. There was an earthquake in the Gorkha district, not so far away from here and magnitude 5 on the scale of Rigter. No false alarm, but a good practice and I am hoping it stays with that.

The next phase

Our 5 year contract with the Nepali government is coming to an end in 2012 which is reason for Stichting Veldwerk to switch to privatization of the running projects. We are in contact with several government bodies to see where they can take over parts of our work. The local partners are now being trained on project proposal writing and on approaching new donors and fundraising. This is all future focused and will probably take another 5 years, but it is good to already set these hooks NOW, so they now learn to do it themselves LATER. So far Stichting Veldwerk already achieved a lot in the past and that was only possible with all the huge support from the Netherlands: the many volunteers who helped here, and all the financial support that we received, with our big gratitude for that!

But the coming phase is almost the hardest, to make the local partners independent and to 'secure' the projects. For this we still need a lot of support, because running a children's home with 50 (handicapped) children is expensive and thus needs a lot of money ofcourse, same as 250 day care children and 145 students that are able to go to school because of us. So we are again hoping to count on your support this year.

Dear reader, so far the brief update, we wish you for now, also on behalf of the board of Stichting Veldwerk, all the best for 2012 with a lot of prosperity and happiness.

Rene Veldt and the Veldwerk team, Kathmandu, Nepal.

In order off: Stichting Veldwerk, Egmond Binnen, The Netherlands