The Project
Volunteer in Nepal

This GVI volunteering in Nepal programme provides volunteers with the opportunity to take part on a volunteer placement whilst being fully immersed in the local culture and enjoying the range of trekking and recreational activities (such as white water rafting and wildlife safaris) that Nepal has to offer. Realistically, four weeks is the shortest duration in which this can be achieved. For anyone with the extra time, ‘putting something back’ can be extended in multiples of two week periods (i.e. 6, 8, 10, 12 weeks). The heart of the first four-week period is the 12 days you spend somewhere in Nepal as a GVI volunteer with a carefully selected small organisation that needs you.

There are no specific skills or qualification that you need to join this programme, as a simple desire and passion to help can be enough. However, specific (quite basic) practical skills can be valuable, such as skills in IT, carpentry, catering or even simple plumbing or electrics, etc. Or your many miscellaneous talents can be applied as well (musical and sporting talents being just two examples). During your time abroad, three qualities that you will use and develop are: awareness, common sense and confidence. For the volunteering placement, you may find yourself working in a struggling (but loving) orphanage, helping out at a vocational training centre for ex-street kids, working hands-on at a women’s empowerment programme, or helping in a school that needs a teacher whose ‘mother tongue’ is English.

The volunteer placements are outlined below:

Teaching English - Schools in Nepal follow a fixed syllabus for teaching English. Volunteers will teach school courses in collaboration with local English teachers. As a native speaker, you will make a very special contribution and you are welcome to bring some teaching aids like colouring books or drawing sheets for the children to use in a classroom environment. Volunteers may also be called on to help with sports and extra-curricular activities.

Children’s Homes - Every year hundreds of young children are abandoned in Nepal’s towns and cities, left to fend for themselves penniless, hungry and alone. Some are found sleeping rough, others are ‘sprung’ from wretched work conditions. Others, even younger, are left destitute, abandoned by parents or a single parent who is herself probably an orphan that are too desperate to provide. These children are without education and other opportunities, without somewhere to belong and without grown-ups they can trust and rely on; deprived of love and hope. Much of the focus GVI brings to the children's home is emphasis on extra education but the need is also to help create a caring and positive environment. Besides teaching, good children’s homes are structured to develop competence and life-skills in the children and a strong sense of fellowship and social responsibility. While helping to create the aura of a happy home, GVI volunteers participate in health education, games, drawing, painting, games, music and sports.

Community based Conservation – Rapid modernisation and population growth is everywhere in Nepal, impacting on the country’s cultural and environmental traditions and heritage. This impact is lessened when the true value of that which is threatened is appreciated and when steps are then taken to conserve them. Education and action by example is the GVI principle applied in villages and small towns. A famous case is the ongoing protection of a magnificent giant banyan tree, known as ‘Operation Big Fig’. Other issues concern restoration of old but useful buildings, improving access and conservation of water resource at village level and refuse recycling.

Please note that it will be up to the project staff and the volunteer together to decide on the most appropriate placement, depending on your previous skills and experiences, as well as your interests.

POKHARA

GVI’s two wonderfully happy and positive children’s homes in Pokhara need our continued support:

The Big Children’s Home has 32 children (a few more boys than girls), who each have insatiable appetites for life, knowledge and activities. A volunteer’s role here is to support them with their school homework, encourage their enthusiasm for speaking English, and organising recreational activities they can enjoy. If you think this doesn’t sound that busy, think again, as duties also include escorting the children to/from school and helping them with chores around the home. Thus the volunteer’s involvement is pretty total, as are the rewards. You will have plenty of guidance from staff like Tulbir and Dilip.

The Small Children’s Home’s aims and structure are much the same. Ganga and Thak have 19 Children (girls and boys) and a truly homely house and ambiance. The children’s enthusiasm seems boundless, helping the volunteer to be drawn into every facet of family life. Volunteers also have a life away from the homes, for accommodation is nearby in GVI’s comfortable facilities, which have good meals and a friendly team environment. Pokhara itself has its famous lake-side setting and is the ‘Gateway to the Annapurnas’, where you will trek.

CHITWAN

Chitwan is the lowland sub-tropical jungle region of Nepal that has the entire Nepal Himalayas distant on the northern skyline. Close to the National Park famed for its one-horned Asian rhino and Bengal tiger, is the village of Chitrasari. Here, volunteers will supply very hands-on support to children who until very recently had a very raw deal, but who now are a family putting back the essentials of being and feeling secure. Perhaps of all the GVI Nepal volunteering placements, this is where true practical compassion is required first amongst your attributes. Volunteer involvement is as much here as in Pokhara and can extend into assisting in the local schools.

The children live a very simple life, without sufficient space for a volunteer. Thus at present volunteers are accommodated a cycle-ride away at lodgings provided by a park visitors’ facility. Although there is no provision for close involvement with the workings of the National Park, association with rangers and guides can bring you into closer contact than is available to the ordinary visitor. N.B: activities here can be subject to monsoon conditions in July and August.

BANDIPUR

Bandipur is one of Nepal’s most charming little towns, being in a hill-top location and having stunning mountain views. In Bandipur volunteers have exceptional opportunities for community involvement, especially for those who are self-motivated and will not only take on a job but also see and advance its potential. A volunteer is needed in the local library teaching English, elementary computer skills and also provide possible non-medical practical assistance to the 10-bedded one-doctor ‘cottage hospital’.

The volunteer will make friends and many acquaintances in and around the town, will have a room overlooking the little bazaar and will eat well at a ‘local hostelry’. The town has a small seasonal flow of tourists who are likely to enjoy hearing of the role that you and GVI are playing in the local community.

TRISULI VILLAGE, DHADING DISTRICT

This unique project has several goals to do with the creation of a sports facility/recreation ground and the activities associated with it. It is in the process of generating huge interest and inspiration and creating a good platform for training teams and building team-work. This new facility is adjacent to the local school of 550 pupils. In conjunction with this is the construction of a building for both sporting and community use.

This sporting facility is part of what we call ‘The Trisuli Centre’, which also now has the Trisuli Young Leaders’ Club; with an exceptionally dynamic membership of approximately 30 young males and 30 young females. The purpose is responsible citizenship and the keys are team-work and awareness, and helping to produce the evidence that a young individual can make a difference for the better. The Club provides opportunities for learning English and computer skills, and matters can be shaped to suit a volunteer’s ability to impart his or her knowledge and aptitudes.

Trisuli Village is on the banks of the Trisuli River, at the point of a major crossing point provided by a 200m trail bridge, which gives it the colour and dynamics of a small but significant entrepot at the road-head. It also includes that river’s most active white-water rafting centre and a small bazaar flagged for a slow systematic restoration and ‘face-lift’ which is in need of practical help. The village is becoming well-known as the location of 'The Big Fig’ – probably Nepal’s biggest Banyan tree, with vast spreading boughs and a Jurassic forest of aerial roots. GVI have been involved in helping to preserve this, while helping to foster an important concern for Nepal’s neglected heritage. Although accommodation and lifestyle is simplicity itself, there are however very acceptable toilet facilities and hot, solar-powered, showers.

NUWAKOT

Newakot Bazaar is a small but very imposing historic fortress town north of the Kathmandu Valley, en route to the Langtang Himal. Here is the newest of GVI’s Nepal projects which has a general brief to help better the community and the young people in particulaR - not least to detract them from the lure of big city life. GVI Newakot is getting involved in organic farming and carbon offset enterprises, as well as in extramural English teaching and (2009) a first student introduction to the world of computers. The family of the headmaster currently supplies the warmest of hospitality, although sometime in the future, it may be at the renovated farmhouse of the organic farm where volunteers will be accommodated.