Art Month Grand Finale

Assembly time before it all began (Kelly, Nena, and Susmita)

We had a wonderful art show, complete with a community art project, and awards given for creativity and originality.  The kids really created some beautiful art work!  We had everything from finger painting, to sketching, to 3-D dioramas, to paper mache, collages, and self-portrats.  We definitely have some budding artists in our school.  The best part was 200+ visitors from the community coming out and taking part in the exhibition.  Art Month was a lot of fun.  Enjoy these photographs!

Lindsay Brown and her sister are here!

Special thanks to Rajesh Sir, Kelly, and all the teachers and volunteers for working hard all month to organize this for our students!

Raju, Srijana, and our clinic

Raju is visiting from Kalikot

This month we have the sweetest little 5 year old girl staying with us who is being treated for Black Fever.  Tope, our chairman, went to visit his village for a few days and found our little friend Raju in very serious condition with a swollen belly, sunken in eyes, and jaundice skin. We got her to the hospital just in time last week where she had two blood transfusions.  *Special thanks to our volunteer and Mendham native Tom Cioppettini who offered up his healthy B+ blood. Raju was discharged a couple of days ago and is slowly gaining her strength and coming back to life. She is eating up a storm and has been such a champ while getting her daily injections and taking her icky tasting medicine 3 times a day.

Raju's father has 6 other children and went back to their village where he subsistence farms to support his family. He will return for Raju's follow-up hospital visit next month. She is really shy and timid and usually speaks in head nods and a whisper. I still can't convince her to join in with our nursery class or satsung, but I guess I can't blame her. I'm sure this place seems really different to her and she is still very little. She actually reminds me of a lot of the kids when they first came to live here, especially Shanti who took about 6 months to utter her first words. The girls, volunteers, and I took Raju out shopping the other day and bought her a pretty dress with red flowers on it and some purple bracelets. When she finally smiled, I could feel my heart pitter patter.

Tope and I were talking in the car today about the fine line between life and death. We've had the privilege of watching modern medicine save a lot of lives and experienced the tragedy of losing them as well. One thing is for sure, we always do everything we possibly can. And really, our clinic would not be able to help kids like Raju without all of you who support and invest in it so I'm mainly writing this to say THANK YOU. Although I keep most of the childrens' medical issues private, I did want to tell Raju's story as an example of how much of a difference your support can make in one child's life.

Something we learned right off the bat when we opened our school is that health and education really do go hand in hand. We couldn't have the kids come to school regularly and succeed until they were healthy and nourished, and they couldn't be healthy and nourished until they came to school. There are many challenges, living in Nepal with health, clean water, and sanitation. Creating an environment where children thrive and succeed, really is like solving the pieces of a puzzle. Over the past four years it's been amazing to watch the transformation in our kids, figuring out what works and what doesn't, assessing their needs and finding solutions. A lot of our focus is on prevention and we find that we're able to nip a lot could be serious issues in the bud through preventative care, like immunizations, administering vitamins, creating clean water stations, good nutrition, dental hygiene, and regular deparasiting.  Sometimes it's the smallest things that make the biggest changes.

While I'm on the topic of our Kopila Clinic, I thought I would introduce our new clinic nurse, the amazing Sirjana who has been a wonderful addition to our team. The kids just LOVE her and she's been working endlessly in the clinic to keep the Kopila kids strong and healthy.  You should really see some of the stuff Srijana sees and does every day and how calm and sweet and patient she remains.  Nurses are the best and we really did somehow land ourselves an out-of-this-world one! 

Our Clinic Nurse Srijana

garden shots

It was such a dust bowl here for a while but with the rain coming through everything is getting greener.  I think it's safe to say monsoon has arrived and is just getting ready to kick it's way into high gear.  Yesterday we could barely do assembly because the rain was pouring and pounding down so loudly on the tin roof. 

This afternoon Krishna and Deepak were high up in the Jamuna tree with bamboo sticks knocking and throwing fruit down to all of us down below trying to catch them.  Maya collected the jamuna fruit in a bucket.  Then I did a little photo shoot around the garden with the kiddos while we picked anything that looked ripe.  All the credit goes to Amrika Aunty and her green thumb.  

We are really working as a big family on committing to composting and staying green!  It's definitely a challenge with so many kids and the constant running around but Nena, our wellness fellow is staying on top of it and even bought us a new green compost bin.  We definitely go through our phases of being on top of it and then not so on top of it.  I'm really trying to keep the children off of packaged and plastic wrapped foods and opt for snacks that come straight from the earth.  It's easy right now with mangos, lichee, watermelon, cucumbers and plums in season.  I really love the summer time. 

 

this week in photos

Our home fellow Safira left this week.  I was teary-eyed for a couple days leading up to her departure. Safira has been my left hand (I'm left handed) for the past year.  She has been ever-present, patient, loving and a kind, calming, positive force in the children's lives here.  It was very rare that I saw her without a smile on her face, even amidst sleepless nights caring for sick children and rounding up naughty kids every day after school to help with homework.  Not to mention, she can dance Gangam style better than anyone on the face of the planet :)  I really couldn't have asked for a better second mommy to my children.  Even though this week was sad I am thrilled she is returning to Ithaca, New York to go back to school. I know Cornell will be lucky to have her, just like we were. We love you Safifi! 

Our women's center is in full swing. We've divvied everyone up into 5 groups that meet throughout the course of the day, 6 days a week. The women are all so into it!  It's just been an absolute blast. Every time I walk into the room to teach a class or check-in on how things are going I feel so happy.  It's almost impossible not to be in there and smiling or laughing and in a good mood.  In all my years of running this project, this week being around everyone reading, writing, creating, sewing, and sharing with each other has been the proudest I have ever felt. I really feel like we're on our way to something big here. Rupa, this sweet young woman pictured below has 5 children. She is younger than I am, and needless to say, a product of child marriage. I was so happy to see her signed up for classes, with the goal of finding a way to provide for her children. I watched her spend an hour yesterday trying to learn to write her name R-U-P-A, laughing and joking the whole way through. One of her daughters goes to our school and the the two of them are spitting images of each other. My secret goal for her is to have her off the side of the road breaking rocks in the next 6 months. #KopilaWomen! 

John, Tope and I went to the Indian border this week after we dropped Safira off at the airport and bought 3 more sewing machines, some fabrics, and sun flowers for our garden.  It is hot hot hot down there.  Makes rainey Surkhet feel like an oasis.

We've been eating corn, corn and more corn from the garden.  It's soooo good.  Our summer tomatoes are coming up next.

Look at the puppies!!!  I swear they're getting bigger by the day.  

We hosted our friends at the local Deaf School for art month this Friday and made art together for this month's art theme!  We had so much fun and I got to practice my sign language. Unfortunately hard of hearing students here don't learn universal sign language or get the support of hearing aids and other medical, social/ emotional support. Anyone who knows sign language and might be interested in a volunteer opportunity, please contact me here.

Our big art show is this Friday.  The art work hanging around the school makes everything look so much brighter.  We've got some students with some serious potential.

Our girls won their soccer game this morning 6-0!  We are so proud of them for all the work they've been putting in at practices after school with Ali, Kelly and Nena.  We're doing everything we can to promote girls sports in Surkhet by hosting tournaments, creating matches and forming a league of other schools who are committed to creating sports programs for girls here in the Valley.  There are virtually no opportunities for girls at the moment and Kopila is working to change that.  Grassroots baby!

Aren't these two coaches on the sidelines the cutest?  

That's our week in a nutshell!  Sending you love and wishes for a wonderful weekend. xoxo

Women's Center Opening Day

Today we started classes at our women's center!  We divided our 65 women into four groups and started them on basic training with the sewing machine.   Each class is about 2 and 1/2 hours and we have two lovely and inspiring group leaders and sewing teachers.  It continues to amaze me how eager they all are to learn and be a part of this.  Their enthusiasm is contagious.  We all sat in a circle, introduced ourselves and went over what our dreams and goals are for the next few months.  Then the women learned the basics of the sewing machine, how to peddle and set their machines up.  We had a lot of fun!  Our women are from all different age groups, all different village areas and all different castes and almost none of them have ever been to school but it's just magical to watch them all sharing working together on this.  I have a feeling they are going to catch on really quick.  Today was really a dream come true for me and for all of us at Kopila.  So excited to see where this journey takes us.