Directors report

Our third year of operation since becoming a registered charity in the United Kingdom, 2007-2008 was another excellent year for Himalayan Learning.

Our third year of operation since becoming a registered charity in the United Kingdom, 2007-2008 was another excellent year for Himalayan Learning.

Continuing our aims to work locally and with grassroots communities, we ran a series of local feedback programmes during 2007 to survey the difference that Himalayan Learning is making in Nepal. Responding to requests and recommendations we put into action the following:

1. Opened the first office so that locals could access Himalayan Learning services and support within official, private, and secure surroundings.
2. Started to look into how our logistics acquisition could better support local infrastructure, skills, and products.
3. Recruited another staff member with alternative language skills.

Political developments have also enabled us to reach schools and communities in more remote regions that were previously too complicated to visit. Six schools have been visited and are in the process of joining the Himalayan Learning programme, most of which are many hours walk from the closest driveable roads – quite a walk for some of us less fit individuals!

Because of changes in region we have also employed another staff member called Bishnu Maya Rana who is from the Magar community and speaks more of the local Tibeto-Burman languages than our current volunteers.

The problems of communication have continued to persist – delivery of information from Nepal to the UK and vice versa has been quite a problem and resulted in a number of issues when updating sponsors. We have also not yet been able to re-establish our previously very successful online shop as the issues that stopped the programme before have not yet been successfully worked through. The major problem for us is the length of time land-mail takes to travel, and the lack of Internet facilities.

In the next financial period we will be using the funding raised online for our initial trial of large-scale school renovation. Thanks to less than a dozen donors we raised the amount needed to renovate Shanti Primary School.

We will also be developing more of our online facilities – Himalayan Learning prides itself on having the most advanced online donor service utilising modern technologies to give donors access to far more information about where they are helping than other similar organisations.

I would also like to say that we are very grateful to supporters around the globe whose generosity has been tremendous. I would also like to thank our Trustees and volunteers who have all given their time free over the past year. Finally, let’s cross our fingers and hope recent political changes make a more stable and prosperous country in 2008!

Oliver Spencer-Shrestha
Coordinator
Himalayan Learning
1st May 2008

To download a PDF file (1mb) of the Himalayan Learning annual accounts of 2008, click here.