Background of our Trip

In June this year, our whole family is going to Nepal to live and volunteer in a remote village. Last fall, Jessica and I watched an assembly at her school. During the assembly, about a dozen high school students presented information about people, famous and unknown, who had volunteered in various ways around the world, and they discussed how the volunteer efforts of these people had changed the lives of those they had touched. Jessica came home from school that day and decided that our family needed to do more to help others. We searched the internet for a volunteer opportunity that matched our family’s interests and capabilities. We did not want to be a small cog in a very large organization, and we did not want to be involved with the same organizations that everyone else at her school is involved in. We wanted to find a volunteer opportunity with a small program in a less-travelled area of the world – an organization in which we could really make an impact.

After much searching, emailing, phoning, and discussing, we decided that we wanted to get involved with an organization called the Himanchal Education Foundation. This organization was started in the village of Nangi, in northwestern Nepal. The organization is trying to develop a model for volunteerism which can be used by other villages in Nepal. They have built a school to educate the children in the village, as well as children from even more remote locations around Nangi. Some students walk up to 3 days from their homes to attend school in Nangi, and at the end of the school year, they walk back home to stay with and to help their families. The Himanchal Education Foundation also sponsors many other initiatives, such as community healthcare and environmental conservation. Through the efforts of the Foundation, many children are now receiving an education and many families now have access to proper healthcare.

The website for the Himanchal Education Foundation is: http://www.himanchal.org/ . The description of how we get to Nangi is very interesting (and a little daunting!). We have to fly to Kathmandu and then to Pokhara. From Pokhara, we drive about 3 hours to the trailhead, and then we hike for about 8 hours to get to the village. It is hard to even imagine how remote the areas must be where some of the students come from if they are a 3 day walk even farther from there. On the website, you can see the school, and if you click on the link to “Volunteer Living Arrangements”, you can see where we will be staying.

When we go to Nangi, we will be involved with the village in many different ways. Our family will be the first family to volunteer in Nangi. I think that they are as excited about this prospect as we are! Jessica, Bruce, and I will probably spend some time teaching classes at the school. The younger kids will have an opportunity to play with the students who are from remote areas and are living in Nangi without their families. Apparently after school, these children love to learn new games and will play games like Capture the Flag for hours. Our big effort, though, will be installing a solar water heater. Nangi is in a popular trekking region (near the Annapurna Circuit). There is a camping area just outside of the village, and we are going to install the water heater in the campground. This will provide the villagers with a means of income because they will be able to charge the trekkers money for a warm shower. Since the Nangi is relatively remote, it is difficult for the villagers to earn an income to afford to pay teachers and run their school. The revenue from our project will be put back into the school and used to make improvements. It will also be used to sponsor additional children so that more children in this remote region can attend school and get an education. The solar water heater will give the village a way to earn money so that they are more independent and do not have to rely on donations from outside sources. The other advantage of installing a solar water heater is that it reduces the use of natural resources (trees) as a source of heat, which has many benefits. Given Bruce’s and my educational backgrounds, this is a great project for us. We have been designing the system, and our family took a “field trip” to a local solar water heater business to learn more about how they work. The kids are learning a lot about solar water heaters, alternative energy, project management, pressure relief devices, etc. It has been a great experience for our whole family so far. As I mentioned, we are doing all of the work for the design and installation of the equipment.

We picked this organization for our family because we feel like it is well-managed and very focused on high-value efforts. We also feel like we can make a significant difference and that our kids will gain an appreciation for another culture. We are going to learn some Nepalese and are working on learning more about the culture of Nepal so that we can be sensitive to how our actions are viewed by others. We hope to go back to Nangi on a regular basis to continue and to further develop our relationships with the people who we meet on this trip.

Here are some general maps of Nepal: