Nepal
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Namaste and welcome!!
We invite travelers to come and experience Nepal in a mountain farming community. We run a primary school in the rural community of Saping, which is 3 hours bus-ride plus a 2 hour walk from Kathmandu. This is a beautiful area of Nepal with mountain views and rice-terraces.
The school offers free education to students, and has a special focus on educating children from poor families; some of our students walk 2 hours a day just to get to and from school. Our village was badly impacted by the earthquake; around 70% of our students are still living in temporary shelters.
Before you read on please note:
*️️️️️️️️️️We need volunteers with fluent or native English
*️️️️️️️️️️Minimum time commitment is 3 weeks
Gardening
Building
General Maintenance
Cooking / shopping
Farmstay
Other
Help with Eco project
Help in the house
Helping with Tourists
Language practice
Art project
Help with Computers / internet
Teaching
Volunteers will get a real insight into traditional rural Nepalese life by staying with us. Saping is quite remote, a little like stepping back in time 100 years. This is a traditional farming area; women have to walk up to an hour to get water from a well, and the village only got electricity around 7 years ago...so you will get to experience an authentic side of Nepal. We'll warmly welcome you into our culture.
We're primarily looking for volunteer teachers, however our volunteers can also do some farming, cooking, or maintenance work if they want to.
Our volunteers teach the standard curriculum of English, maths, health, social studies and science - usually to the grade 4 or 5 class. You can also teach art, music, sport, child rights, first-aid, yoga or any other type of educational project you're interested in.
If you're a qualified teacher, you'd be welcome to work on improving our English curriculum, and also to work with our Nepali teachers to help them improve their standard of teaching.
We often have little maintenance, painting, or construction tasks, so we'd welcome someone with basic building skills. You do have to be fairly self-directed to do this, and to be able to come up with little projects yourself.
We're also open to any other ideas volunteers might have, so if you have a project in mind, please just email us! (We would welcome long-term volunteers who wanted to get more involved in the running of the school and volunteer program etc...the sky is the limit!)
Volunteers work around 4 to 5 hours a day from Sunday to Thursday, and 1 hour on a Friday. If you would like to have Friday off so you can take 2 full days to go exploring, that can be organized as long as you let us know in advance.
We have a minimum 3-week stay. (Except for people who want to come to do maintenence...they can come for just 10 days if they want).
We accept volunteers during the school term. Here are the dates that the school is open:
4 January to 26 March
1 May to 1 July
1 August to 10th October
25 October to 20 December
(Basically, we are closed for the months of April, July, most of October, and Christmas/New Year).
English, Nepali, Japanese
We have three bedrooms on the first floor of the school. You'll have a private room, a foam mattress, and the area is quiet at night.
We have mosquito nets for the beds, a couple of rechargeable lights, and there's electricity in the rooms. However, (as with all of Nepal!) there is no heating available during winter and there are electricity cuts each day. We have plenty of blankets etc and some sleeping bags. There is solar hot water for showers and a newly built kitchen in the school with a little terrace with great mountain views.
We provide the traditional Nepalese food of dahl baht twice a day, with tea and biscuits twice a day as well. We're trying to vary the menu, so a couple of times a week you'll have something different, like pancakes or pasta.
The bathroom is shared with volunteers and teachers, is very basic, and has a squat toilet. We don't have Wifi, but you can put a local SIM card in your phone to use internet if you want to.
There's a small store 30 minutes walk from the school which sells basic items like phone recharge, biscuits and soap, but any other stores are 1.5 hours walk away in the town of Dhologhat.
Please do expect to experience some culture shock, even if you've already been hiking in other areas of Nepal. Traditional Nepalese life moves slowly and has a strong emphasis on tradition rather than change. Saping offers volunteers a break from the fast pace of modern life, but can also be frustrating for volunteers to adapt to a slower way of living. Educational, organizational, and hygiene standards are generally low anywhere you go in rural Nepal, and Saping is no exception!
So, we ask that our volunteers be prepared for living in a rural village. The volunteers that cope best are adventurous, self-sufficient and easy-going. There will be cultural challenges that arise, but we're also extremely friendly and welcoming!
Uttam (the school director) doesn't speak English as his first language. So it's helpful if you write in simple sentences and if you're as exact as possible in the dates you'd like to stay. It may take 2 or 3 days for him to answer your mail.
How to get to us:
From Kathmandu to Saping takes around 3 hours on a bus plus a 2 hour guided walk up a steep mountain. In the dry months (from October to late June), it's possible to get a bus up the mountain, and then just do 1 hour of walking on flat ground.
We run a guesthouse in Dhulikhel (which is on the way to Saping from Kathmandu) so volunteers usually go to the guesthouse first and then we take you to Saping from there. You catch a bus from Ratna buspark in Kathmandu to Dhulikhel (1.5 hours) to our guesthouse, then the next day we will take you on a 1.5 hour bus ride to Dhologhat and a 2 hour guided walk up to Saping. (Or a 2.5 hour bus ride and one hour walk in the dry months).
Our volunteers also use our guesthouse in Dhulikhel as a base; they sometimes go there on weekends to use the Wifi, washing machine and to hike around the local area.
Because we provide free education to children (through the support of overseas donors), we ask our volunteers to pay US$6 a day to cover food and electricity.
We really look forward to welcoming volunteers into our village and culture, and we appreciate all that our volunteers do to help our children and community.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
More than two
Maximum 4-5 hours, 5 days a week
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