Open World Trip Update: Nepal 2019
Meet the Nepal 2019 team!
Natalie Chabot:
One of my main objectives while in Nepal will be to conduct teacher evaluations following the Danielson Framework as well as conducting professional development sessions for TriKa’s teachers on best practices.
Shelby Miller:
I will be working on keeping you all updated on our trip via the blog and social media! (Follow @OpenWorldCause) I will be working with the team to interview members of the community where our school TriKA is.
Melissa Collum:
I cannot wait to begin working on the many initiatives we have planned; curriculum development, educational evaluation, professional development, health and wellness checks, and the A Day for Girls Program!
Ben Honeycutt:
I am the co-founder of Open World Cause (OWC). At the request of Tri Ka’s educators, my main objective for our trip is to help develop strategies that help ensure the long-term success of the Tri Ka school and its students.
Haley Swanson:
I’m the outcast nurse that’s on board to conduct all of the health assessments to identify nutritional deficiencies and researching ways to incorporate these nutrients into their diet!
John Martin:
I am a district level administrator in my current school and while at TriKa my focus will be on assessing the physical infrastructure of the school, the administrative framework of school operations, as well as capturing stories of the school and its community, while supporting the work of my teammates.
Morgan Anderson:
I am most excited to interact with the children of TriKa and experience their English Language Learning lessons. Being the youngest member of this team, I feel honored to have been given this opportunity and I can’t wait to see what Nepal has to offer.
The Open World team is gearing up for our second trip to Nepal (arriving July 2) since our first 2015 visit four years ago. In that time, we’ve broadened our goals and have lost and gained new allies. TriKa, our flagship school --and the reason for our upcoming visit-- has grown from 26 students to more than 90 students (about a 350 percent increase) since the last time we went. We attribute the increase in enrollees to a then-new commitment to funding a lunch program. Many students weren’t attending because they didn’t have access to lunch during the day, but with the lunch program, their parents could send them to school knowing their midday meal would be taken care of. This increase in students could not have been possible without Open World’s dedicated donors and partners (that’s you).
Now that we are visiting again, we have some new objectives. A big one for us this year has been organizing Days for Girls in order to provide menstruating women and girls with reusable pads and other personal hygiene materials. Girls often are socially excluded due to menstruation and therefore miss many school days, which can set them back and ultimately discourage them from going to school.
Another goal our supporters have helped to achieve is the acquisition of more than a dozen used ipads and tablets for the children to use in the TriKa school. The students will use the ipads primarily to extend their English learning. We will be using standards set by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) in order to implement the new technology in the classroom as effectively as possible.
Finally, we will be conducting general wellness checks of the students, their families and the school’s infrastructure, as well as evaluating the teachers using standards set by the Danielson Group. The Danielson Framework is an internationally recognized educational assessment used to evaluate educator progress and development in the classroom. The specific pieces of the Danielson Framework with which we will evaluate the TriKa teachers focus on classroom environment and instructional practices. We hope to tailor professional development for our fellow teachers through these evaluations, and in turn, create an even better learning environment for our TriKa students.
We couldn’t do all of the work we’ve described above, and much more, without you. Thank you for keeping up with our updates and supporting Open World!
If you like what we do, consider donating to our GoFundMe page for the family who runs our TriKa school: https://www.gofundme.com/help-the-panthy-family
~Written by Deanna Ambrose