Donations

Account for Donations:

What are your donations used for?

Our initial idea, to financially support families in need in order to enable their education, had to be abandoned because of our first experiences and because of advice we have received from experts:

• A reasonably fair selection is difficult, as basically many children are in need.
• The sponsored children might get discriminated and socially segregated, due to the special support they'd receive; mobbing could be the consequence.
• Handing over the money to a representatitive, a teacher or a principal, seems risky. Experts warn about the possibility of a breach of trust, of corruption, or even sexual exploitation.

We have therefore decided to financially support only projects for whole classes or for whole schools, to support the further education of teachers in rural areas, or to donate school and educational materials.

Why did we choose these key aspects of activity?

1. For a child to attend classes in Nepal, the parents have to pay the tuition fee, fees for exams, school books, writing material, health costs, meals, etc. All in all, about CHF 200 per year. For a Nepali family with many children, this is nearly impossible. The monthly salary, for example of a kindergarten teacher, is CHF 40 to CHF 80.
2. Most teachers in Nepal are badly educated, or not educated at all; cf. blog entry "Problems at Nepal's Schools". They teach in the same way as they had been taught in the past: completely teacher-centric, without any student involvement and without any teaching material, everything needs to be memorized. This is where we would like to make a difference and teach, in short workshops, simple and easy to learn basic principles of methodology.
3. The infrastructure of most rural schools is of unimaginably low level: Tables are often missing; the study benches are hard and uncomfortable; space is limited; often, illumination, doors and windows are lacking; the blackboard cannot be legibly used. A comfortable learning environment is far from posssible.
4. Teaching material for secondary schools and toys for pre-schools are mostly missing. Libraries in Nepali schools are practically empty. Writing materials are of bad quality and difficult to get. With little money, big changes can be made.

How did we use your donations so far?

• A list of previous investments, enabled by your donations, can be found here.