Mountain Trust Nepal
Since 2009, Your Home On Crete has been supporting the Mountain Trust, an organization that began in 1999 by building schools, child care centres, orphanages and community centres in Nepal.
We began at first with friends and family but after a while people heard about our work, made contact and offered to help. It is like a stone in a pond - at first the ripple is very small but grows larger as the word spreads.
Nepal is an ancient society of mainly Hindu and Buddhist peoples. Despite being one of the gentlest and most hospitable peoples, Nepalis have deep-set problems.
The huge scale of inequality between castes, regions, ethnic groups, genders and other groups combined with the Nepali state being the 3rd most corrupt in the world had fuelled a civil war which claimed over 13,000 lives and countless injuries, abductions and murders between 1996 and 2006. Hundreds of thousands were obliged to flee their villages for refuge in the larger and more anonymous cities.
Of all 25.2 million Nepali, no less than 31% (that is 7.8 million individuals) have to survive on under 0.73 Euros a day. But not just for a day - every day, all year round and year on year. Imagine the impact of a birth, marriage or other medical events on your finances were you in their shoes. Over half must sell land or cattle to pay for childbirth. According to the World Bank, 80% of Nepali live on fewer than € 1.45 a day. Although there are massive chasms between the high caste, educated and wealthy rich and the majority low caste, poor agricultural workers, the average GDP per person is a mere 190 Euros a year. (That's about the cost of one hour's work by a computer programmer in the UK.) No wonder around 15% of the population has left the country to find decently paid work abroad and send funds back to keep their families fed.
Life for most is very harsh. Average life expectancy is a mere 60.2 years and the average rate of literacy in the population aged 15 yeas or older is only 56% (in the remote areas, literacy can be as low as 10%). On average if you are Nepali and below the age of five you have a 50% chance of being mal-nourished. If you are a Mum, best not choose to give birth in Nepal because it is one of the deadliest countries in which to have a child. Every 90 minutes, a mother dies in child birth in Nepal - which is between 5,000 and 6,000 a year. One in four of Nepal's newly borns are under weight (at less than 2.5 kg). According to the Red Cross, each year 30,000 babies die less than one month old and 50,000 are lost before reaching one year of age. That is one every 20 minutes.
And you think that's bad? Well, imagine some of the other pressures too - such as 5,000 a year succumbing to Tuberculosis, landslides in the rainy season or one of the unsafest road networks in the word. Around 30% of children spend their childhoods crushing stones on the riverbeds for a living, making and carrying sand for building construction. Their parents depend on the meagre income their children generate and cannot afford to send them to school. They begin learning how to crush stones at around two years old.
Your Home On Crete now sponsors around 100 Nepali Students who would otherwise be excluded from access to education. Our sponsors have literally changed lives. We enable sponsors to help the neediest Nepali children to attend school. These include orphans and children born into riverbed families (who without outside help are condemned to crushing stones for building sand and gravel instead of attending school - from the age of 18 months), as well as the poorest and most deprived families.
It's been a while since you last heard from me. My apologies for that, but that does not mean my activities for the Mountain Trust stopped!
On the contrary, I am very proud to announce that the sponsorship program is still successfully helping dozens of students pass high school and hopefully help them in building up their future.
I visited Nepal recently (in March 2020) and was happy to see how things are improving in the country. Lots of public works are being done, infrastructure, roads, bridges, cable cars, an international airport in Pokhara and many more. It looks like the country woke up from a collective stupor.
It is also surprisingly clean. Garbage bins are everywhere, in different colors, marked with "use me". It seems to work, streets are much cleaner, and the eternal silver papers from empty bags of chips glittering in the sun have disappeared from many roads. This can only be positive.
Back to my recent visit. Starting with the Bal Mandir School where I was warmly received by the headmaster Sushil and his staff. Eight new classrooms are being built funded by the government for the damage done during the 2015 earthquake.
There are now 1.475 students in Bal Mandir, and 67 staff including 58 teaching staff. We sponsor 59 children in the school.
In April it will be the year 2077 in Nepal. The school year starts in April up to March of the coming year for the nursery until class 10. For class 11 the year starts in September and ends in April, and for class 12 it goes from August until April.
After class 10 kids have to choose a direction, for this reason some leave the school to pursue their studies in another school or city. Bal Mandir provides classes 11 and 12.
The school mainly provides expenses themselves via individual sponsors like the Mountain Trust, the Rotary Club, the Lions Club etc. A small amount is sponsored by the government and the ratio of parents unable to pay the fees is 20% to 30%. Donations are essential to complete this lack of funds.
The school has managed to receive the reward for outstanding results from the government - twice! This helps collecting funds. The school provides a dining room and a kitchen, food is free for students who cannot pay- thus saving the parents the cost of feeding them -, which amounts to about 40%. This too needs to be sponsored.
Students are recommended for sponsorship by the MT Nepal team in discussion with their teachers. We look for students who are hard-working, hold intellectual promise and whose potential may be compromised by a difficult home situation. For a donation of min. €50 a year, you can pay for a child's education and help them break out of the cycle of poverty into which they have been born. This is quite an achievement!!
The Riverbed or «squatter» Community has its own stable clean water supply which supplies the toilets and helps to reduce the prevalence diseases transmitted by drinking contaminated water. This also means the community does not pay for water anymore; it comes free from the tank. Living conditions have improved, there are more solid built houses replacing the metal ones.
The community is pretty much surviving on its own these days. I continue sponsoring 2 families in particular. One is a family of 9 members sponsored by us since 2013. I have seen Nirmal grow from an extremely shy little boy into a 13 years old young man who likes science and plays football at school. He talks a few words of English and is a far cry from the child I first met 7 years ago, who would not look at me, not even when I tried to make him laugh or gave him a balloon!! (Balloons always work!).....
The other family has been sponsored since 2011, a 36 years old mum with 4 children, a grandchild (!!), and an "invisible" husband making a meager income in Dubai and who visits them every 2 years. To sustain the family, she breaks rocks in the riverbed and collects sand to sell to construction companies. During the dry season, it takes 3 people 3 to 4 days to fill a truck. They receive 3000 Nepali Rupees (€22) per truck, from which they have to give 800 NR (€6) to the truck owner. During the monsoon the river swells and brings more sand, which makes collecting it easier, they may do 2 trips per day.
She managed to build her own house, with the help of some relatives and has 9 chickens.
However, the community still has too many too young mums with a baby on their hip.....
I visited the brand new Himalayan Children Care & Environment Conservation Organization (HCCH) where I sponsor 13 children. Finished in 2018 this impressive Tibetan building has 25 rooms housing 87 children and is Lama Passing's (the founder) dream come true.
HCCH was founded with children from extremely deprived families living together under one roof to give them a better future with free education, health care, food and lodging. These children are from remote villages in the ancient kingdom of Mustang, also known as the forbidden Kingdom, an area hidden behind an almost impassable wall of the world highest mountains. Lo-manthang, the capital, has a close cultural tie with Tibet. Due to its proximity to Tibet, religions and language have remained entirely Tibetan. Its people speak a dialect of Tibetan, and geographically Lo-manthang is a western extension of the same plateau, with the same problems of inaccessibility.
The older children of HCCH make an annual field trip to their homeland during the summer, in order to maintain interaction with their parents, relatives, and the Tibetan way of life, culture, traditions and religion. They go per jeep to Jomson, and it takes another 3 days on horseback to reach Lo-manthang. Quite a journey as you can imagine... but worth it to maintain their strong ties with their home land Upper Mustang and their families.
I met most of "my" children, who all seem very happy in their new environment. They go to school in the Tibetan Camp which is only a 15 minute walk. Most of them will stay in the "hostel" until they reach the age of 17 - 18 years, the age where they usually continue their studies and get a job. Sports and other activities are being organized for the children, as well as debate and quiz contests, swimming, sewing, art painting classes etc.
On my last day I took 12 year old Shiva and his grandma shopping in a supermarket. That was quite an experience for us all. Shiva and grandma had never been to a supermarket, they live in a remote village, a 3 hour bus ride from Pokhara. Shiva lives in the village with his grandma because his mum passed away when he was a baby and his dad is unable to work due to mental issues, he lives with them in the village. Grandma receives some money from her other children (she has 8) to pay the bills and has a buffalo providing milk for her and her family. There is a small grocery store in the village and she grows vegetables in her garden.
I had some extra spare money and was advised they are in urgent need of clothes and groceries, so I took them shopping. Grandma would not use the escalator and walked up the 3 flights of stairs to the third floor. Coming down was too difficult for her so she decided to take the stairs. There we stood, hand in hand, at the top of the stairs, trying to catch the next step. She just could not let go, her legs swinging in the air, until I finally managed to get her on the moving step. When we reached the bottom we just jumped off the escalator, as far as we could. It was a very funny sight and we all had a good laugh!
Shiva did not know where to look first for clothes. He knew exactly what he wanted, would not settle for things he did not agree with. He kept trying on clothes, while the staff in the shop was cheering and encouraging him. We left with 2 big bags, 5 pairs of shoes, socks, sweaters, hoodies, pants, a shirt. The bill: € 125!!!! Just to show you that our money is worth so much more locally, I get much more with my Euros in Nepal than I would here in Europe.
You hear me coming, keep giving and sharing, please. Work is being done, with results. The people benefiting from your support will never forget what you have done for them; I hear this over and over again. I believe they mean it. I could never have achieved these results without you, my sponsors, and I cannot thank you enough for your continuous support.
DANDHEVAT - THANK YOU!!!
In love and friendship.
Miette Lauwers and MT team
Mountain Trust website: www.mountain-trust.org
My website: http://www.yourhomeoncrete.com/en/charities_we_support.aspx
