July 2019 Nepal Trip

On this page you will find our pre-trip goals, individual team member reports, and post-trip goals.

Or scroll down and click on a team member’s image to read their report.

Pre-Trip Goals 

Pre-Trip Planning
In 2017, Executive Director Ben Honeycutt spoke with Govinda Panthy about the potential of OWC traveling to Tri Ka in 2019 to establish long term curriculum and professional development programs to serve the students and teachers of the Tri Ka school. Govinda said structural barriers at Tri Ka made teaching English an incredible challenge and requested that OWC help provide solutions to these structural barriers. Ben reached out to Professor Collum and Chief of Operations Connor Janzen who approved of a planned trip to Nepal in 2019. In 2018, Ben, Professor Collum, and Sarita Timalsina coordinated with the Tri Ka school and Narayanpur community on a list of initiatives requested by the community for OWC’s volunteers to fulfill in a trip to Nepal. Upon receiving the requests from the Tri Ka community, Ben and Professor Collum created the list of expectations for OWC’s trip and reached out to volunteers with appropriate professional expertise who were willing to assist OWC and Tri Ka with fulfilling these goals. Sarita worked to keep our partners updated at Tri Ka while communicating concerns and expectations back to OWC. Ben was tasked to work with Tri Ka on fulfilling the broad expectations of the trip, Professor Collum, with her experience working on international projects with the U.N., volunteered her incredible expertise to lead our day to day tasks while working in Nepal.  

Lunch Program/Student Nutritional Needs:
A primary goal of our 2019 trip to Nepal is to check in on our school lunch program -- A program that OWC has funded since 2016, and a program we’ve funded as the direct results of our community surveying that we conducted during our 2015 trip to Nepal. As of June 2019, this program is the longest ongoing program OWC has funded, and we hope to evaluate the progress of the program, get updates on the 2019 costs of sustaining the program, and consider if any changes need to be made to better help students attain their nutritional needs.

Days For Girls:
An effort spearheaded by Tri Ka Educator Anjali Acharya, Professor Melissa Collum, Tri Ka Head Teacher Sudha Panthy, and Sarita Timalsina (in alphabetical order). OWC will travel to Nepal with a goal to help facilitate a community lead training on women’s health and distribute sanitary pads to women in the community through a program through Days for Girls International. Professor Collum originated the idea of OWC facilitating a program in Dang. OWC has had a series of Skype Calls with Sudha and Swachalika Panthy to help set-up the initiative with Sarita Timalsina serving as a translator for the critical objectives of the program. In the U.S. Professor Collum has set up volunteer drives to sew washable sanitary pads and health kits in Wisconsin while Natalie Chabot has organized a pick-up and delivery of 30 pads and health kits from the Days4Girls chapter in Colorado Springs.  

Remote Professional Development:
OWC’s primary objective for remote professional development in the Narayanpur community is to develop a plan to build a digital professional development platform that would allow TriKa’s teachers (and teachers from other schools) to attend professional development sessions (covering topics at their request) remotely. OWC has been developing this idea since partnering with Double Robotics to deliver a telepresence machine to TriKa in 2015 and has been receiving ongoing feedback from the TriKa school. Another goal of the trip is to assess the viability of developing an online platform and to survey the interest and needs of the teachers from TriKa and surrounding schools.

In-Person Professional Development:
Before the trip, OWC has worked extensively with Govinda and Sudha Panthy to develop topics for potential professional development training sessions for the educators at the TriKa school. On the first day at the school, OWC plans to survey the educators at the school to catalog their interest in professional development and isolate the specific subjects they would like to cover in their trainings.

Curriculum Development:  
Govinda and Sudha Panthy have both expressed a major interest in developing a system that will allow them to measure the growth of their students in English Language Proficiency. They are both working with Natalie Chabot and Melissa Collum to develop potential methods for their teachers to track growth in their classrooms. OWC has also been requested to explore developing curriculum that helps catalog Tharu traditions and history as well as exploring bi-directional learning partnerships between the Tri Ka school and schools around the world.

Health Observations:
Haley Swanson, a recent graduate from Viterbo University’s Nursing School in Wisconsin is traveling with Open World Cause to provide health and dental observations for the entire student body and members of the TriKa community at their request. In 2016, OWC was contacted by a university who wanted to pilot a virtual dental program for schools in Nepal. During this trip, OWC hopes to evaluate the need for a dental program in the community, visit the local health clinic, conduct toothbrushing lessons, and distribute toothbrushes and toothpaste at the request of the school.

Evaluation of Future Partnership Goals with the Narayanpur Community:


OWC aims to understand the needs of the Narayanpur community through at-home visits and surveying, and to understand the demographics who attend the school. The TriKa school is attended by many Tharu students, students who hail from an indigenous population, and students from the Dalit caste, a historically marginalized community in the Terai regions of Nepal. OWC hopes to understand how we can better provide opportunities and empower students and adults from these historically marginalized populations of people in Nepal. OWC also aims to help facilitate travel by Sarita Timalsina who can help start a long-term partnership with the overall Narayanpur community. 

Evaluation of Future Partnership Goals with the Tri Ka School:
OWC hopes to get a better financial picture of the TriKa school through financial records provided by Govinda Panthy. The hope for this goal is to develop goals that more specifically target the exact needs of the school and parents of the community to apply for grant opportunities that can fulfill the needs of the TriKa school that will allow students to reach the outcomes they hope to attain. The hope is that these grant opportunities can ensure a long, indefinite partnership between TriKa and the Open World Cause.

Internal OWC Audit: 
Education Administrator John Martin has been tasked with conducting an internal audit of OWC’s processes when volunteering abroad. A former member of OWC’s board of directors, John has also been tasked with ensuring the board’s requests are fulfilled during our work in Nepal. John has also been assigned to work with Executive Director Ben Honeycutt and Director of Special Projects Shelby Miller to put together a long term plan of action for the continued operation and success of OWC. 

Team Reports

Click on the images of these team members to read their reports!

The reports include information including: general impressions of the school, recommendations for improvement, descriptions of initiatives (Days for Girls, professional development, lunch program, etc.) and daily logs of our work in country.

After a busy 2 weeks, we set off for Kathmandu and met Raj. Raj showed us around the city, gave us tours and shared local history. We shopped, explored temples, and took in some final sights of Nepal before flying home.

If you’re ever in Kathmandu, reach out to Raj (or reach out to us and we will connect you)! He loves sharing Nepal and India with newcomers:
Raj’s WhatsApp: +977-9817423099 Email: bhoopraj25@yahoo.com
Facebook: Bhoopraj Sharma

Post-Trip

Lunch Program/Student Nutritional Needs:
This is a staple of Open World Cause’s (OWC’s) accompaniment with the TriKa community and was approved to continue upon receiving an updated budget from TriKa (the last estimates taken on the program were done in 2015). OWC received Tri Ka’s updated budget on October 6th, 2019, securing Tri Ka and OWC’s continued partnership in the program. In OWC’s 2015 trip to Narayanpur, the lack of a lunch program was identified by 90% of the parents we surveyed in Narayanpur as the biggest roadblock preventing children from attending the Tri Ka school. 24 students attended Tri Ka in 2015. In July 2019, 3 years after the establishment of the school lunch program, 95 students were now attending the Tri Ka school. In Fall 2019, OWC was awarded a $5,000 from U.S. Company RS&H after writing about the impact the lunch program had for Tri Ka’s students and the Narayanpur community. OWC plans to donate the award in full to Tri Ka when school resumes once Nepal’s 2020 COVID-19 lockdown is lifted. Plans to launch a campaign in U.S. schools to fundraise for a school garden (to add more nutrition to student lunches) and playground at Tri Ka were underway before being postponed with the U.S. school closures caused by COVID-19. 

Days For Girls:
With the program’s set-up led by Professor Melissa Collum and University Student Sarita Timalsina, OWC scheduled a Days for Girls program on Saturday, July 6th, 2019 at the Tri Ka school. 30 women were scheduled to attend the program, led by Tri Ka teacher Anjali Acharya and Professor Melissa Collum. 74 women in total attended the programs, with a second program being added after the first program reached maximum capacity in the Tri Ka classrooms. 74 total feminine hygiene health kits were distributed to women in the community after the program. Teacher Anjali Acharya did a phenomenal job leading the program for the women in Narayanpur, passionately calling for the women in attendance to take their health into their own hands. The program was hugely popular in the Narayanpur community and head teacher Sudha Panthy has requested to host future Days for Girls programs in the future. In August 2019, Sarita Timalsina was invited to the International Youth Day 2019: Engaging Youth to Advance Sustainable Cities and Communities at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Sarita met professionals from all over the world and presented about her efforts to help OWC establish a Days for Girls international program in the Narayanpur district in Nepal. Sarita has gone on to accept an official role as a Consultant for Women’s Health & Educational Initiatives in OWC. Sarita traveled to Tri Ka in January 2020 and is serving as the liaison between OWC and Tri Ka to help continue Days for Girls programs in the future. 

Remote Professional Development:
In Nepal, Ben Honeycutt shared OWC’s vision for a remote professional development program with Professor Melissa Collum and Internal Auditor John Martin. Both reacted enthusiastically to the plan and Professor Collum and student Morgan Alexander advocated putting the plan into motion. Since returning to the United States, Executive Director Ben Honeycutt has had regular check-ins with Tri Ka’s administration and educators and built two professional development sessions for Tri Ka’s teachers through the Facetime app. OWC had been planning additional PD opportunities at Tri Ka in 2020 but plans were put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

We wish to congratulate student Morgan Alexander for being accepted into Research in the Rotunda and the National Council for Undergraduate Research for her paper: Online International Phonics Professional Development for Non-Native English Speaker Educators in Developing Nations: Facilitating Direct Interaction Between Professional Development and Instruction. Morgan’s hard work providing professional development with the Narayanpur community in part led to her acceptance into the program. We are so proud of Morgan for her work in this field. Among other goals, Morgan hopes to establish consistent online professional development opportunities for the teachers in Narayanpur through this program. 

In-Person Professional Development: (click here for the lessons)
At the request of Tri Ka’s staff, OWC conducted six professional development sessions with the staff of the Tri Ka school. At main points of emphasis were teaching a foreign language in the classroom, implementing technology in the classroom using the SAMR system, using apps on the iPad to engage active learning, and modeling classroom techniques such as reading out loud in the classroom and asking guiding questions to students while reading. At their comfort, several Tri Ka’s teachers piloted these techniques and had the option to ask for feedback from the educators who were part of the OWC team. The Professional Development got consistently positive reviews from Tri Ka’s teachers and in September, all TriKa’s educators were awarded a certificate for completing the program. Tri Ka’s educators and the headmaster of the Narayanpur public schools have requested we continue offering Professional Development to the Narayanpur community through an online platform. 

Curriculum Development:  
Since concluding our trip to Nepal, Govinda Panthy has worked with Ben Honeycutt and Natalie Chabot about establishing a program that would allow Tri Ka’s teachers to measure their students’ growth as they master the English Language (an administrative goal for the students at the Tri Ka school). At the request of Tri Ka’s administration, Natalie Chabot, OWC’s Director of Foreign Language Acquisition, has put together guides for teachers in their instruction of a foreign language, along with formative and summative assessments for teachers to give their students to measure their learning in English. We are hopeful to continue working on this program when the Tri Ka school resumes after locking down for the COVID-19 Pandemic. Once school resumes, Natalie plans to reach out to Tri Ka’s educators to receive feedback on the program and how to best launch a program that would meet the needs of the staff and students of Tri Ka. 

OWC has also worked with Tri Ka educators and the Tharu community on developing a curriculum centered on indigenous cultures and Tharu traditions. OWC was able to attend a Tharu performance event on the trip and researched the Tharu culture after traveling to Nepal. Ben Honeycutt piloted a lesson on Tharu and indigenous traditions in his 6th grade Social Studies class after consulting with a Tri Ka administrator on the lesson. OWC hopes to work with Narayanpur community to develop a unit that tells the story of indigenous cultures and the Tharu community.

Health Observations:
Nurse Haley Swanson conducted health observations of 95 students at the Tri Ka school and members of the Narayanpur community at their request. Haley and Professor Collum identified three children showing symptoms consistent with Measles and upon further research found an outbreak had been documented by news outlets in the Narayanpur community. Despite the measles outbreak, Nurse Haley reported the students to be in predominantly good health and made several recommendations for establishing a nutritional emphasis in the school lunch program and establishing a dental program at the school. A middle school led campaign (from middle schoolers running a program called “Crossing World Barriers”) to begin funding the nutritional program and a new playground have been delayed due to the COVID-19 outbreak. After Nurse Haley found that 56% of the students had dental cavities and parents reported having no access to dental care, Haley visited the local medical clinic to survey the needs of the health infrastructure in the Narayanpur community. OWC is working with two organizations to try to establish a dental program at the school, and plans to update our supporters about future breakthroughs. 

Evaluation of Future Partnership Goals with the Narayanpur Community:
The Tri Ka school is looking into converting from a private school into a public trust. The parents in the Narayanpur community are thrilled at the prospect of Tri Ka converting into a public institution and OWC is researching how we can best facilitate the transition. From our research, OWC is very excited about the potential of working with an institution that directly will go back into the public sector of the Narayanpur community and country of Nepal. We have prioritized focusing on how we can best contribute to Tri Ka’s transition for the 2021 calendar year. To make this transition possible, OWC is also researching how to raise teacher salaries at Tri Ka to ensure Tri Ka’s educators are receiving a salary in line with teachers from other schools in the community. 
 

Evaluation of Future Partnership Goals with the Tri Ka School:
OWC had 10 individual requests from Sudha and Govinda Panthy to get necessary information in the event of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service. These requests were made from our board of directors to ensure the continued partnership of OWC with the Tri Ka school. Govinda and Sudha fulfilled every single request and provided all documentation requested from the board of directors. OWC is excited to continue our partnership with Tri Ka into the indefinite future. The Tri Ka school has set targets to research the process to converting to a public school in the community and hopes to add classrooms to their school by 2024. Sudha and Govinda hope this will allow more children in the community to start attending school.

Internal OWC Audit: 
Upon receiving individual feedback from the OWC volunteers on our trip to Nepal and the recommendations of John Martin, Shelby Miller is working to create consistent reporting practices for volunteers on our trip. This includes a simplified template that all OWC members can utilize as well as creating scheduled times for reporting to be completed. OWC received feedback from Tri Ka that they would love more access to professional development opportunities as well as more liaisons in OWC’s organization that are understanding of Nepali and Asian cultures or who have experience working in these cultures. OWC has worked tirelessly to find incredible candidates with these cultural and experiential backgrounds and several amazing people have accepted roles in OWC and have already lifted our non-profit to exciting new places. In Professor Collum’s observations of OWC, she recommended that with OWC’s volunteers’ experience in education, OWC seek out building long-term accompaniments through offering free professional opportunities to schools around the world. OWC’s board of directors is very pleased over the six reports that have been submitted focusing on OWC’s 2019 & 2020 work with the Tri Ka school and hope to formalize the process of our organization’s reporting on volunteer trips in the future.

In organizational news, in August 2020 OWC plans to re-add John Martin to our board of directors, along with Colorado Springs chef Crissie Elep, and Middle School Educator Jessica Stuart. We are pleased to announce that Shelby Miller and Connor Janzen plan to become co-executive directors of OWC, while, after five years of serving as OWC’s Executive Director, Ben Honeycutt plans to accept a role as OWC’s new Chief of Operations.