ICFON gives support to
Nepal!
You too?
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. In the beginning ICFON
provided full funding for the children. In order to be more
sustainable, NTS raises partially its own funds. ICFON provides
support to the poorest children. For these children this support 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 2010 about 350 children receive education at the NTS.
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.
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
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