Raising support for Impact Schools, Nepal

Our story is rather long, but just before you get disheartened and click off, I promise you this 5 minute read will be worth your time. You are bound to get inspired.

Impact Schools is a network of schools located in the mountains of Nepal. The village, that the original school is located in, is so remote, that it can't be reached by car. It takes a 2 day bus ride from Kathmandu, the capital, and a 4-hour hike to get to the school, which can't even be undertaken at all times of the year. The village doesn't have access to many things that we'd consider a norm, including a hospital.

The founder of Impact Schools came from the village himself. In his early childhood his family had to walk for three days to see any kind of civilisation. His parents having seen children dressed in school uniform, wanted their son, Prakash, to also attend a school, and so they sent him to the only boarding school in the region. The school had to soon shut down, due to a bomb threat from an ongoing civil war. Prakash, however, earned himself a scholarship to the capital. In his final year, before being able to complete his studies, both of Prakash's parents had passed away and so he had to return home to take care of everything. Prakash didn't waste time or the experience he had recently gained, and immediately founded a school which aimed to provide children in the village with basic education. The school was growing day by day until Prakash got a scholarship to study in the US. There, instead of abandoning his village, and focusing on self centred goals, he learnt about how to best develop the school and with that knowledge he came back and developed his initiative further. Impact Schools now has two schools in the region, educating 248 students and accommodating 32 orphans.

Beginning of summer 22, we came into the picture. Our team is a group of top years and university students, who wanted to visit and volunteer in Nepal that summer. We wanted to push ourselves out of our comfort zone, and experience a different kind of society. Unfortunately, we couldn't reach the school because of the monsoon season, but instead we proposed to run daily online classes, focusing primarily on English, to help in the best way possible, considering the circuimstances that we found ourselves in.

Fortunately the lessons turned out to be a success, even though they were of course only a needle in the hey stack compared to what Prakash and his team were doing on a daily basis for the past 10 years. Over the course of the summer children went from being able to introduce themselves in English to having a wide grasp of vocabulary (having learnt how to tell the time, what to say in everyday interactions among many other things) and to even writing some poetry. We as a team, were on a daily basis inspired by the constant positivity, and the hunger for learning that these kids had despite everything. Their bright, ear to ear, smiles helped many of us get through a very difficult term filled with university applications. By giving, we gained so much more.

There were difficulties we had to overcome in the process. In August the weather got really bad and the data was too weak to continue running the lessons. We then learnt that, Impact Schools could no longer afford their wifi subscription, and relied on data to connect to the rest of the world. So through support from our beloved family members we managed to raise money and provide the school with 9 months’ worth of wifi.

When we returned to school, most of us had practically no time to do anything except study, but we didn’t want to stop our contact with the kids that had by then become a big part of our lives. So we organised a Community Service on behalf of the school that ran every Wednesday morning, with the younger years delivering similar lessons as to those we delivered in the summer.

That winter, we got to finally visit the school in person. This was one of the most incredible experience at least I had ever gone through. We took three planes, and then drove for more than 10 hours, on what's considered to be one of the most dangerous roads in the world, that isn't operational at all times of the year, before finally reaching the school.

There we gifted and set up the gifted the Christmas Lights for which we had previously fundraised. To this day I relive the sight of watching the children peaking out of their rooms, already past their bedtimes, all smiling cheekily, to see what was being set up. The next 5 days we spent getting to know the children better, learning about their extremely deep and difficult stories and teaching in person.

One story we were all blown away by is that of a small boy, who had been given oranges by his sister, his only relative that came to visit her from time to time. The child became a part of the orphanage just before our visit, as he first lost his dad, who was imprisoned and then his mother who died of a heart attack whilst carrying a heavy load on the road back home. He only had his sister that was looking after him, and whilst we were there, she brought for him seven oranges. Without hesitation, upon receiving those oranges, he came up to my older brother and gifted them to us as a sign of gratitude to us for being there. That level of selflessness set for us a standard towards which we now strive but can never fully reach.

Since the trip, we have continued to support Impact Schools in any way that we could but had to halt our own project while settling into and adapting to life at university. However, throughout our journey we’ve grown to understand how fortunate all of us have been with the opportunities that we have been granted with, naturally by life and by our families. As a result, we always knew that we want to continue running online classes, for as long as we can, to pass onto the children the diverse education that we are receiving, which helps to express one's ideas in written, spoken, and pictorial forms.

Time has come again when we know that we would like to revive our work and try to expand it. We dream of spreading education and the knowledge of English to as many children as possible, who right now may not even be able to have a go at living a normal life and fulfilling their incredible potential.

You may be asking yourself, but why am I reading about all of this. Currently, we are building a website that will show all the work that we have done in the past. It is something that we need to try starting to work with more schools and children, as a clear representation of our experience and of our goals going forwards. Any support would help us massively on this mission. We would be forever grateful to you.