We (Tracy, Nishchal and Annabel) raised $10,000 with your amazing help through our crowdfunding campaign (#keepkidssafeandclose) to build a small school for the Kanchanjangha cooperative tea farmers kids in Nepal. The funds were raised end of 2018 and the school was build January to April 2019 and is now almost finished. That’s amazing and we are very proud and thankful to all of you!
As we have a strong belief in complete transparency, this post is about the challenges we encountered when executing this project! Since April we have hit some hurdles which have slowed us down somewhat:
- We have been using local manpower during the dormant tea season to work on the school construction. From April and May onwards the local people are already into tea plucking and processing which slowed things down.
- In Spring we also came across some administrative hurdles, we had planned to be affiliated with another school in terms of the registration, operation and logistics, however due to a local government policy change, and we are now required to have our own independent school registration.
This has meant that were were not able to register the school for this academic year as planned (grrhhh!). However, we have passed some of those hurdles and plan to open the school in April 2020, coinciding with the Nepali New Year. Progress has been made on the following:
- School registration: To register as an independent government school, we needed a non-compete letter and approval from neighboring schools and we have received the approval from two schools which sets things in motion for our registration.
- Board of Directors and Managing Committee: Sujan Shrestha (a long time friend of Nishchal) and Nishu Acharya (Nishchal’s wife, just newly wed, congrats!) are taking the lead in organizing the committee and playing a significant role outside of their full-time jobs to prepare the documentation and comply with all the rules and regulations and finalize the registration for next academic year. Thank you Sujan and Nishu!
- Daycare for younger kids: Fortunately, the daycare for the younger kids does not require much regulations and we are hoping to get it running as soon as possible. This will require hiring at least one individual to run the day to day operations.
Thank you so much for your continued support. If you are a backer on Ulule you should have already receive this and prior updates on the building project and these administrative hurdles. Any questions or concerns please reach out to us. We are so grateful for all your generous support and hope to post pictures of our inaugural class very soon.
So long,
The Three Tea Musketeers