Friday, August 6, 2010

Financial support: Support 4 Nepal 2010

Dear Friends,

We already had some days to recover from our magnificent trip.
Time to give you a final update about our trip to Nepal, what did we actually manage and realise in Nepal?

The past year we succeeded to collect 25 000€ thanks to all your help!

How did we spent this money in Nepal:

The monastery that we support is overcrowded and wants to extend, to realise this they need
130 000€. They already realized to collect 25 000€. This year we donated 14 000€ this means that still 91 000 is needed to build their new building. These children come from very remote areas and are often the victim of neglection and abuse... because of this reason our financial support is of utmost importance within our project. These children get a loving home and a good education in their monastery!






4000€ is donated to the school project in Daman a very very remote area in Nepal that has no school or education facilities at all it is still difficult to convince the local villagers about the importance and the benefits of education. Children between 2 and 7 years are left alone while parents are off for a whole days work on their rice fields...

500€ is donated for sports materials for the school in Ratankot.






500€ is donated for sports materials for the monks in the monastry.









200€ is donated to buy 2 corn pealers for the villagers in Ratankot. People are forced to peel the corn by hand after drying it under their roof tops, this is very labour-intensive. With the corn pealer work will be finished faster. Time is very important for these people. Most of the villagers only work to survive (to harvest enough food) some of them even have to search work around Ratankot with other farmers because their harvest is not sufficient to support their family.



These corn pealers will be property of the community of Ratankot (a group of people who pay every month a small amount of money to join the community) . The goal of the community is to stimulate trading in Ratankot.

In future they will try to buy all the fruits and vegetables in Ratankot and sell them on the market in Kathmandu (this is only possible in big quantities). This way the farmers get a reasonable price for their fruits and vegs and the community keeps a small profit. The members of the community also participate in trainings organised by the government helping afterwards other farmers with the knowledge they gained.

The villagers can also borrow money for urgent medical matters from the community. Afterwards they have to pay the money back without any interests. The community also tries to organise medical cares, social projects and agricultural projects in Ratankot. The community consists out of older respected and young motivated villagers (although I must say they are all very very motivated to help their village!)

2000€ is donated to buy and plant trees.
We bought 5000 butter tree seeds this is a tree with a lot of healing power it is also used for making butter delivers good wood and is a preferred tree for honey bees. We bought and planted 500 fruit trees and Karma got 400 wood trees for free from the government. Later this year another 400 fruit trees will be planted. All the villagers who helped with planting these trees got the possibility to buy some of the donated fruit trees for a very small amount ( in this way the fruit trees will be looked after very carefully. The villager didn't get anything for free but they had to make a small personal investment. The community also had a small income out of the tree selling and they can use this budget to organise similar projects).





1450€ will be donated to pay for the yearly school fees for 25 poor students in Ratankot. The selection of the children has been done in co-operation with the school board and the community. We had the chance to meet almost all the children and to visit their homes. We deliberately emphasized that this is a one time project that we want to support because it only helps the effects and not the cause. We asked them to think about other projects for helping these people to become self-supportive!




700€ is donated to build and maintain the greenhouse. One of the villagers offered his land for the construction of the greenhouse he will receive a very very small income for maintaining the butter seeds and the greenhouse, it is a very poor family. Next year these butter trees will be planted.

300€ is donated to build 10 garbage collection points, this is to prevent the garbage dumping in Ratankot and is the start of organising a waste management system.



1200€ is donated for the water distribution fund. During the raining season people get sick because water get mixed with cow dung and human dung, people drink from these water sources running down from the mountain tops. In the future the villagers want to build a water distribution system to prevent these difficult problems.

150€ is used to buy materials to work on the greenhouse and in the rice fields, these materials are now donated to the community of Ratankot and can be lent to villagers.

Next year we will travel back to Nepal to evaluate all our projects and to continue helping these people who are so motivated to improve their standard of living.