
ICFON stands for Help to Nepal ICFON wrote an article for the Nepali Times on the use (or uselessness) of children's homes in Nepal. Nepali Times, Februari 2008 Extended version of the article financial organisational advisory for education and its development rural development income generation health The International Council for Friends of Nepal (ICFON) is a Dutch development aid organisation that supports Nepalese non-governmental organisations in their activities to improve the livelihood of local people in Nepal. Since 1990 ICFON has provided financial aid and advise to groups of poor and deprived people in order to help them improve their own living conditions. ICFON focuses on educational projects as we strongly believe that education can be the way to a better future and enables improvement of living conditions. Furthermore, ICFON also supports agricultural and health projects that are initiated by poor people. Education must be available for all people, including the poor and handicapped. In the Netherlands, ICFON provides information on land and culture of Nepal and on development work. A quarterly magazine, the Samachar, is published for our donors, giving background information on Nepal and articles about the ICFON projects. During fund raising activities at schools, we help to create awareness of the lives of children in a developing country, especially in Nepal. Last, but not least, we organise the yearly “Nepalday”; a day that is filled with Nepalese movies, lectures, music, slide- and dance shows... One of its kind in the Netherlands! ICFON supports projects of the following Nepalese partners: Integrated Self-Help Association for Rural Development – Power of local initiative The Integrated Self-help Association for Rural Development (ISARD) supports several poor communities in Sindhupalchowk district by financing small agricultural and educational projects. In each project village ISARD makes an inventory of the problems that people experience and the way they would like to improve their lives. This has resulted in a small local school, several trainings sessions for income generation, introduction of new agricultural products, improvement of soil quality, improvement of the local health care system and much more… By increasing agricultural production, villagers no longer feel the need to leave the village to search for jobs in Kathmandu. We can proudly say that ISARDS way of working is very basic but unbelievably fruitful! Ebindra Neupane, the coordinator of ISARD, was born in the district himself and initiated ISARD in order to help the people around him to help themselves to improve their livelihoods. Nepal Education Support Trust – Innovative educational projects The Nepal Educational Support Trust (NEST) is a very young and dynamic organisation that runs educational projects in Hetauda and surroundings (south of Nepal). ICFON provides supported teacher trainings, children's clubs and the NEST mobile library project . Children's clubs operate in the libraries who also undertake activities to promote reading and writing. They are even making their own books by collecting newspapers and magazines. ICFON was very pleased with the results of the above projects started in 2005 to support the NEST goat-project. NEST hands over goats to very poor families when they promise to send their children to school. The families take care of the livestock and sell milk and any offspring. They use the income to pay for the school fee and buy schoolbooks and uniforms. As this project was very successful ICFON decided in 2006 to distribute goats to extremely poor families where one or more children had to work in a factory. In 2005-2006 ICFON, NEST and Janapriya Secondary School established a vocational and technical school to run Junior Technician of Agriculture (JTA) and Veterinary Junior Technician. The result are wonderful. Now five schools have a mobile library and exchange books. New Tulips School – The chance for poor children! In Koteshwor, Kathmandu, you can find the New Tulips School (NTS) where poor and low caste children receive education. As ICFON provides full funding, this is their only chance for schooling, especially for the many girls that join the school. Under the guidance of Mr Hom Nath Aryal and his wife Meena who is principal, the children get an important chance to escape from poverty in the future. In 2007 almost 300 children receive education at the NTS. Nepal Association of the Welfare for the Blind – Education for blind children Nepal Association for the Welfare of the Blind (NAWB) is the main NGO in Nepal that provides education and vocational training to the blind. More importantly, it is the only organisation that produces books written in Braille. ICFON supports the Integrated Education Projects of the NAWB. In certain schools, blind children participate in regular classes, but receive additional special classes as well. As their home village is often far away from these schools, the children receive full care in a hostel. ICFON finances the education and care of 44 children at three schools in the West of Nepal; an area that is outside the focus of most development aid organisations. ICFON intended to initiate an adapted educational program, in which blind people are taught to earn their own living in their own village. As ICFON and NAWB didn’t succeed in setting up this new program, ICFON has decided to stop supporting this project in the summer of 2008. Help us to help them! We hoped that our enthusiasm has made you enthusiastic as well! Your help is always welcome! If you would like to support our projects financially, please send your contribution to: ICFON, Helmond (BICnumber of ABN-AMRO: ABNANL 2A and IBAN number of ICFON: NL 57ABNA 0491202490). If you have knowledge about educational programmes, health care for the blind or agriculture you are welcome to share your knowledge with us. We are happy with any support that helps us improve the projects. Please contact us at secretariaat@icfon.nl. back to top