The Project Outline

A beautiful country, a diverse landscape and scenery to die for, well known for housing the world’s largest mountain, Mount Everest and attracting thousands of trekkers and climbers every year. But it is also highlighted as being one of the poorest countries in the world, in the top 5 outside of Africa. 68 percent live on less than two dollars a day, and almost half of the adult population is illiterate, preventing many people from participating in or contributing to their nation’s development. With most of those coming from the 84 percent who live in rural communities, and it was from one of those communities where we heard a silent cry for help, and listened.

History

The 2 founders of The Aandhimul Project, Lee Allan from the UK (who was volunteering for another organisation at that time) and Mon Bahadur Bhujel (a Primary School teacher at that time) from Nepal, both met in January of 2008 in a Central Nepal, hilltop town called Bandipur. This small town is located, with easy bus access, 5 hours west of the capital, Kathmandu. After becoming friends, Mon introduced Lee to the village of Aandhimul (2 hours walk from Bandipur) asking for help. Mon's connection to village is that he has family who live their, and he understands the difficulties they are going through and with passion wants to help them. It was this passion that convinced Lee, without a doubt to do whatever he can to help.

Very quickly two more people wanted to be involved in the project. They were volunteers from Bandipur who worked alongside Lee. Angela Sharp from Australia and Jolana Whyte from the UK. After a short period of time spent in the village before leaving the country in March 2008, Lee decided to start this Project, 'The Aandhimul Project', with both Angela and Jolana joining and wanting to do everything they could to help.

Then in the Autumn of 2008 when Lee was back in Nepal he met Lou Boddington from the UK who was a volunteer in Bandipur. She became really interested in what we were doing and from April 2009 she got involved and has been fundraising ever since and doing everything she can to help.

What we have achieved so far (April 2008-09)

The project started slowly because both Mon in Nepal, and Lee, Angela and Jolana in their respective countries had full-time work and volunteered during their free time. But, in March 2008 whilst in Nepal, and when Lee stayed in the village, it was decided that one of the first things we could provide was extra support to the school, which was needed very much.

So the first priority was to raise some money to pay for 2 new teachers and their salaries, and also increase the Caretaker's salary too. Second, the school buildings needed to be renovated and the plan was to raise money for such work as well.

In July 2008 Lee, and Bob Uppington from SHIVA Charity UK, a registered charity with over 12 years experience in Nepal, met. After a great meeting, SHIVA Charity kindly agreed that The Aandhimul Project could work through them and use their experience, also gaining gift aid on any donations given within the UK.

In South Australia between April and August 2008, Angela Sharp managed to raise enough money to cover wages for one year, and by the end of August 2008, Mon and the community of Aandhimul found the two teachers needed, and they were employed. Also, a bank account was set up for the project in Nepal for these funds to be sent to.

Similar to Lee in the UK, Angela found a charity, World Youth International, who would help using their experience, and transfer funds raised from Australia to the bank account in Nepal.

Also, during the summer of 2008 Lee and Jolana managed to raise over £1000 for the school's renovation, from a fund raising dinner held at a Nepali restaurant and 5km charity run in Central London. Then in October, Lee made a return trip to Nepal to get this project started and spend time with the community.

Whilst Lee was in Nepal, Jolana from the UK also received £1500 donated from her employer to contribute towards the school and any other project work that was needed.

In the 2 months Lee was in Nepal, himself and Mon spent time trying to understand the community of Aandhimul greater, and to find out their needs. We realised in this time that there were, and are many issues in this village, and that it would require much more time to understand them and help to resolve them. But first, we believed that for the project to continue and have any chance of being successful that it need to start to employ full-time workers, at least in Nepal to begin with.

After a few long discussions, and due to Mon's great passion to want to make a difference, it was decided that as of April 2009 (the end of the Nepali school year), The Project would employ Mon as a full-time worker. Taking the role as Nepal Project Coordinator.

As for the school building renovation, it was not completed until December 2008, after Lee had left Nepal and returned to the UK. There's also another school building that is too small and not worthy of renovation, and many discussions have taken place, and there are plans to build a new and larger school building to accommodate for the increasing number of students, and to provide better facilities. However, further planning and funding is needed for this to go ahead.

During his time in Nepal, Lee also discovered that the teacher's who were employed by The Project had no previous training, and it was felt a priority to find adequate training for them. After discussing with Angela and Jolana, who had both decided to return to Nepal in April 2009, that with their teaching experience they would put on three weeks of teacher training. Also, Lee's girlfriend Yoshie Uchimura from Japan, who's a freelance illustrator and picture book author, also planned to go to Nepal to run a creative workshop with the children in the school.

In April 2009, for the first time the project intensified. With Mon working full-time and 4 people from overseas, we could really get working within the village and in particular the school. Angela, Jolana & Yoshie, under sometimes difficult circumstances, achieved a great deal in the 4 weeks of April working with the 3 Project paid teachers. With communication issues, cultural differences, hot weather and lack of facilities many bridges were crossed, and near the end of the teacher training it was evident to all, of the hard effort that was put in by the results that were seen.

Also, It was during this intense period that we further understood the deeper issues that this community faces, and most importantly we spent time with the them so they could try to understand us too, and why we, The Aandhimul Project are wanting to help them.