We Are Living In Challenging Times….

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Sorry for the delay in sending news….

We are indeed living in challenging times.  Today, I’m mindful that it was 5 years ago today that the deadly earthquake struck in Nepal killing over 9,000 people.  5 years later we face the difficulties of living with corona virus and the challenges of staying safe and healthy.

I’m grateful and happy to let you know that all students and staff are safe and healthy.  The school decided to close their doors to visitors at the beginning of March ,  a few weeks before the formal lock down was initiated. 

Everyone had regular cleaning duties added to their daily programmes as well as frequent health checks. 

Staying Healthy……

As those of you who follow our FB page will know, in early March and after a superb effort from our student team from both schools, 3rd position was achieved in the 4th Inter School Tri-Lingual and Quiz contest. 

The monastic school hosted the competition over  2 days, which was a logistical feat in itself. 

We can deservedly feel proud of all our students and staff for all their efforts and kind hospitality to other school students and staff and enabling such an inter-school event to take place. 

Everyone had great fun in the midst of serious competition.We were delighted to hold an important education event on female health and menstrual hygiene. 

With the help and support of our dear friends at Rangjung Yeshe Shenpen [they do amazing outreach work – check out their website here http://www.shenpennepal.org/], we were able to source sustainable, washable “dignity kits” for the girls and provide some Nepali language educational comics and training materials. 

Students and staff gathered in the dining hall to watch the training videos and pick up their personal supplies and all agreed it was very beneficial and an important topic to learn.

In this deeply modest culture, such teaching is often neglected so we’re so proud of the school for hosting this important event for the benefit of all our students and staff.  They can now share the knowledge to their families too.End of the winter school term ended, as always, with exams and all students, who have families at home or who don’t live too far away, were excitedly looking forwards to their 1 month holiday.

Before the holidays could begin though, self study and exams

And then came lock down! 
Like so many of us all over the world, travel became restricted and parents could not come to pick up their daughters.  All the children, support staff and most of the teachers had to remain at the school.
Nevertheless they enjoyed the Holi festival together,  The festival of colours is sometimes called as the “festival of love” as on this day people get to unite together forgetting all resentments and all types of bad feeling towards each other.
The vibrancy of colors is something that brings in a lot of positivity in our lives and Holi being the festival of colours is actually a day worth rejoicing. On the day of Holi people play with colours with their friends and families and in evening they show love and respect to their close ones.
And took part in extra computer studies and maths quizzes in between taking it easy and playing at school.
Grateful thanks to all our wonderful teachers and support staff for their excellent care during this difficult time for everyone.

And at last…….. the school administrators have managed to gain permission to take the students back up to Mustang. 

The remoteness of Upper Mustang and our school there, means everyone will likely be safer there and further away from infection hot spots. 

So at short notice, everyone packed up and got ready to travel today.  Students will take a holiday with their families if they have homes in nearby villages when they get to Upper Mustang.  The remaining students will be cared for, as usual by our lovely support staff and some teachers. 

Other teaching staff joining them after lock down when school can start again. 

And maybe the 3 weeks delay has not been all bad news – this time last month the school was still heavily shrouded in snow!
That’s all the news for now.
We’re so grateful that all our girls and staff have remained healthy – thanks to the wonderful efforts of the school staff and executive.
We know that this year will be a hard one for us fundraising as we have little opportunity to run our usual fundraising events.  So if you can help support us in any way with fundraising we’ll be soooooo grateful, as always. 
There’s a link below to access our  teacher’s salaries fundraiser.  We realise many of you will be suffering hardship too.   Any amount you can spare will be gratefully received and will be used to help pay our wonderful teachers a fair salary. 
As you all know quite well by now, we don’t take any expenses from donated monies and apart from bank charges, which we can’t avoid, we’re 100% efficient in sending all donated money to the school.
Please help us if you can.  All donations, of any size will be gratefully received.

Thank you if you can help.  And if not now with financial support, please help us by sharing our newsletter with anyone who may be interested.

Stay safe and healthy everyone.

Here’s that link if you can help our teachers’ salary fundraiser

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