Holi Festival of colour

Holi Festival of colour

Sunday 22 January 2012

SPONSOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!

Support us for a charity Triathlon to make the annual VSO volunteer meeting happen in Nepal

Dear Friends and family

Each year VSO Nepal organizes a volunteer conference, during these three days we gather in a low cost accommodation to update share and plan with each other as well to check in with the ones that are posted in remote areas and look together with VSO how we can make sure we get to reach our goals of enabling people in Nepal to break the cycle of poverty. As a result of the international economic crisis, funding for VSO has been reduced and this event can no longer be funded from the budget.

Because we, the volunteers, believe it is crucial to support each other and get time to discuss our opportunities and challenges in working in improving education, health and governance in Nepal, we are determined to raise funds to make this event happen. For this reason, a few of our brave colleagues are going to participate in a triathlon on the 25th of February where they will have to swim 1,5 kilometers through a mountain lake (in February!), cycle for 20 kilometers through the Annapurna mountain range, and finish with a 10 kilometer uphill run (for more information, see: http://himalayanrush.com/).

We want to know if you are able to help us by sponsoring us to complete the triathlon and support your VSO Volunteer to attend this years volunteer conference. Please pledge the amount you would like to sponsor directly to louise.belinfante@gmail.com

Your donations will be tax deductible as they will be going to a registered charity.
Every little bit helps, we are hoping that among all of our VSO volunteer colleagues we will be able to raise about 3500-4000 Euro in total which will enable us to support our VSO colleagues and the partners they work with. Please let me know if you have any questions or want more details on the triathlon,

Thank you so much for your support

Tuesday 17 January 2012

When does inclusion become exclusion?

(article for good governance weekly)

This week I visited schools in Banke to find out how they include disabled children in mainstream education.

One of the schools I visited was attempting to include deaf children into its school fairly unsuccessfully. There was one very dedicated female teacher who was obviously doing her best to teach a class of fourteen children. The teacher had only received one month of sign language training and was there for very limited by her capacity to teach using sign language. The other difficulty she encountered was that the children were of all different ages. The outcome is a class of fourteen children who are not receiving education to suit their needs and abilities.

For the teacher to receive adequate skills in sign language she needs to receive a further six months training, but who will teach her class whilst she receives this training. And how can the problem of teaching mixed ability children in the same class be overcome.

In another school blind children were being integrated more successfully. The blind pupils are taught in the same class room using Braille and they are able to live at the school during school time to make accessibility easier.

It feels like the attempt to include the deaf children into mainstream education is having the opposite effect excluding them from the education they are entitled to and socially excluding them from the other school pupils. But with limited resources what is the answer?

Deaf children could be assigned their own personal signer who could interpret during class time or each teacher could be taught signing to a high level, but with limited resources these solutions are not practical. The alternative could be a district school in which all deaf children can access education which fits their age and ability and in which teachers receive the correct sign language training. In one way this would promote education inclusion but potentially would socially exclude them from every day society and family life.

There is no simple answer, it’s a complex situation made worse by limited resources and agendas for social inclusion. What we must also remember is that these children are individuals with their own thoughts and feelings and what suits one child may not suit another, ideally it would be good to offer children a choice of how they would like to be educated to suit their individual needs.