We are very sad to announce the loss of GDS founder Joy Leighton, who passed away peacefully at home on 17th December at the age of 96. The energy, drive and tremendous work Joy did through limited communication, political uprising and cultural differences to start the charity was incredible. Joy was a retired school teacher […]
Happy Christmas to all GDS friends and supporters and our wonderful community in Gorkha The sale of seasonal wreaths once again raise money for future projects
All of the 40 participants were very happy with the training and gained individual certificates for attendance. Many of the female teachers were clearly happy to have Megan involved as further inspiration and enjoyed discussion with her.The funding of the programme totaled just £360 from GDS which was used to provide lunch and snacks, banners […]
Megan Sadler worked with teachers in the local schools to understand the teaching methods and share skills. At the end of her three month volunteering placement, Meg was more aware of the skills that teachers wanted to develop and participated as a trainer in the programme. Megan reported ‘Each speaker provided ideas for practical learning […]
Nearly 3 years after GDS funded a programme supporting the Training of Teacher Trainers, a two day event was held in Gorkha for local teachers. Laxman and a number of trainers offered support to local teachers where there was lots of discussion and participation aimed at building the confidence of teachers to develop their skills. […]
Megan visited the Higher Education campus with Campus Chief Ram Chandra, and was able to meet with the 4 students who were sponsored through GDS by the late Mr Hook. They are all very grateful and spoke about the positive effect it has had on their lives and without it they would be unable to […]
https://wonderful.org/fundraisers/NW6D7 As a volunteer for the last couple of months Meg has contributed so much in the school where she worked to support and exchange ideas with staff to develop interactive teaching. She has witnessed the Women’s Hygiene programme and taken part in Teacher Training and has seen what difference every donation can make in […]
The doctor also talked about the importance on checking their boobs and they were shown the correct way to complete this exercise. The women were also given the opportunity to ask the doctor questions one on one. These types of opportunities are so important for the women of the rural communities to spread awareness and […]
After long delays due to covid, we were thrilled to hear Megan was able to join a women’s hygiene programme in the rural village of Masel where forty women turned up to listen to the gynaecologist from Gorkha hospital give her talk. Many of the women attending have no access to health care and may […]
Megan spent a day at Shree Sharkti Secondary School where she worked with Sanjila and pre school children. It was a lovely bright room and some wonderful animal hats were used for role play when the children became the animal making noises and really enjoying the play. Though the hats were a fantastic resource it […]
When talking with volunteer teacher Megan, the children also spoke about the problems they face. Many struggle to consume enough clean water and many talked about the lack of space and loss of playground. The school is still being rebuilt from the earthquake and so there is little space for sporting activities at break and […]
GDS has supported children at this school over many years and Megan was keen to meet those sponsored by Mr Hook who passed away earlier this year aged 101. The children expressed how grateful they were and said that the money allowed them to buy supplies that are essential for their learning to take place […]
Megan celebrated the Hindu festival of Brothers Day with her host family Lila. Sisters place tikas on their brothers to give them protection and give them gifts. In return the brothers gift their sisters money and the mala necklace is given as part of the blessing.
Today is a new building which is cramped but home for the children. Megan has spent evenings with the children talking and playing. Plasticine brought from the UK was a great success as children showed their modelling skills and had lots of fun.
The Shree Bal Mandir School also looks after 25 orphaned children who live in a hostel next to the school which is community funded. As with the school, the hostel was devastated by the 2015 earthquake and the children lived in a make shift corrugated shed on the school playground for months
Megan has been working closely with Suresh who is an English teacher at the school. The syllabus is book based learning but they have discussed ways in which children may be more comfortable using conversational English within the lessons. They have developed a style of team teaching to involve the children more through questioning and […]
Sarita is a valued committee member in Gorkha and she teaches at Shree Bal Mandir school and so we are very pleased that this is where Megan is based for her volunteering experience. The school was badly damaged in the 2015 earthquake with buildings demolished as were so many schools in the district. New classrooms […]
Meg joined Sarita’s class and was pleased to see Sarita ensuring children have some garden skills taught in the limited resources of school – plastic bottles on the school flat roof! (Having never seen strawberries in Nepal previously this is an innovative idea indeed and potential addition to the small garden helping feed the family […]
Lila has welcomed previous volunteers so understands the enormous differences in culture and the difficulties volunteers face in the first couple of weeks. Meg soon felt at home and in the kitchen making roti !
Meg’s first week was at the Bal Mandir School with Sarita and fellow teachers whom she is working alongside. As an Early Learners teacher Meg is keen to share ideas with the teachers she works with and demonstrate interactive teaching to get the children more involved in the classes using the limited resources available whilst […]
