Sincere and grateful thanks to all our friends and supporters though your kind generosity in raising well over 9,000 Euro to support the local communities affected by the devastating earthquakes in April.   As previously reported, our collected monies was distributed by the Sakya Monlam Foundation to areas away from the main international relief funds.   Here you can how some of the aid was distributed in remote Mustang regions.

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Sakya relief-1

Nepalese people are strongly resilient and yesterday, just 7 weeks after the devastating earthquakes, some of the main historical heritage sites such as Patan Durbar Square opened again to the general public. For those of you that have had the pleasure of visiting Kathmandu you’ll know it as one of the truly amazing UNESCO World Hertiage Sites in Kathmandu Valley.

And many children have returned to school this week – that is for those where school buildings remain standing, whilst others are housed in temporary tents.   Of course many children cannot return to school in the worst affected areas because there are no school sites available to them and many are deeply traumatised still.   Of course it will be a long term project to repair the physical infrastructure and maybe even longer to heal the psychological traumas.   Your help and support is still needed even though news of Nepal has slipped from our TV screens.   Many people are still living in tent accommodation or under tarpaulins.   The monsoon season will be a tough one for many families.

Please continue to donate to help our Nepalese families through our blog site to help support these efforts.   Please be sure to let us know that the donation is for earthquake relief purposes.

As far as we understand (although we’re awaiting confirmation) our school building has suffered relatively little damage in the earthquake.  Unfortunately though, there has been significant damage to our school’s founding ancient Namgyal Monastery and boy’s monastic school building near Lo Montang.  There has been structural damage to the building, including the collapse of the roof and large cracks in the walls.  Wall paintings have also been damaged.

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Overseen by the local authorities, the monks and local community moved all historic artifacts including statues and thangka paintings into another building to preserve them.

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As a result of this damage, it is no longer safe for the monks to enter these buildings to perform their Puja (prayers) and rituals.  This is also of significant concern to the local community as the monastery is the centre of community life too in these remote Himalayan regions.

The long process of restoring the gompa (monastery) is now beginning and any contributions towards the restoration of the monastery and school building (the boys school) would be gratefully received.  If you’d like to donate you can do so via our donations page  (please ensure we know the donation is for the restoration project) or directly to the official Namgon Monastery website or email info@namgon.org.   So far our dear generous supporters have contributed over 2,000 Euro towards this important spiritual and community project.

And finally (lots to news report this blog) we’re so happy to bring news that the construction site of the winter school for our girls was undamaged in the earthquake and building is continuing.  Progress is wonderful to see.

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Not only does the project provide desperately needed employment for the builders, it’s wonderful to see something new taking shape in the midst of so much destruction.  Having a permanent winter school in this beautiful hillside location will provide a much needed and conducive environment for learning as well as being able to accommodate all our girls and staff.  It will be such a relief when we no longer need to rent a school building for the girl’s winter school.

If you feel that you can contribute to this important project, we can assure you that all contributions will be very gratefully received and we can assure you all monies are carefully spent.

And to let you know what your contribution can fund:

  • € 5 can buy 10 bricks
  • € 8 can fund the wages of an unskilled worker (helper) per day
  • € 9 will buy a bag of cement
  • € 10 funds a skilled worker for a day or 10Kg of steel iron bars for roofing or pillar frames…..
  • With € 75 you can sponsor the purchase of a door or a truck load of grave or sand or plaster a whole wall

Please contribute if you can through our donations page and be sure to let us know your donation is to be used for the winter school construction project.