Next Tuesday is what we've all been waiting for: our big Fundraiser, Jam for Peace. It will be April 8th at RedRocks with musical guests, drink specials, and information about GPE. If you come out for any GPE fundraising event this semester make it this one!
The volunteers are really hitting fundraising hard this month. Any amount of support is valued to go towards our total project costs of $8,500 . Not only are letters being sent out to friends and family inquiring for support, but this week is Tie-Dye for Peace! Volunteers will be holding a tie-dyeing event on Landis this Thursday from 11-4. This is a creative event where students can tie-dye a FREE GPE Jam for Peace t-shirt or tank top while learning about GPE's projects and the upcoming Jam for Peace event. Volunteers will also be putting on the same event at this week's First Friday from 5-8pm.
Next Tuesday is what we've all been waiting for: our big Fundraiser, Jam for Peace. It will be April 8th at RedRocks with musical guests, drink specials, and information about GPE. If you come out for any GPE fundraising event this semester make it this one!
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There are several exciting updates this week with GPE Nepal! For one, we recently purchased our airline tickets. Five of us will be traveling together from Florida and Taylor will be flying from India and meeting us in Kathmandu. For many of us, this marks the beginning of our journey. It’s surreal to think we’ll be in Nepal in just a few months. The anticipation and excitement continues to grow with every planning meeting. We are beginning to develop lesson plans for the children’s hostels in Daldale and Meghauli. The five core values we decided to focus on are: Leadership, Compassion, Teamwork, Health, and the Environment. Within those categories, we will be playing games, working on youth empowerment, and teaching extracurricular activities such as self defense. In preparation, Sophee has arranged a set of self defense classes for GPE taught by Dr. Sam Staley. Anyone is welcome to join! The trainings will be March 23rd, March 30th, and April 6th at 4:00 pm on Landis Green. We’ll be Tie-Dying on Landis Green April 3rd (11:00 am to 4:00 pm) promoting our Jam for Peace event and Holi celebrations on April 5th. We’re also beginning to look for sponsors! If you would like to sponsor this event or donate to GPE Nepal, we will include your business name on the back of our t-shirts. And don’t forget about our Funstation fundraiser this Thursday night! See you there :) As the team’s departure date approaches many circumstances have changed but the project members are commencing with flexibility and ease. A traditional Holi Day event with colorful powder can no longer be held on campus due to University Policy, however, one will be held with the Nepalese Student Association off campus. The location and details will be disclosed at GPE’s Tie-Dye event on campus in late March (be on the look out for the Facebook event!). GPE t-shirts can be purchased at the event and members will happily assist with the tie-dying process. Participants are encouraged to wear them at GPE’s Jam for Peace Event in April. Local restaurants and establishments who wish to make a donation will have their logo printed on the back of the shirts. As for the Boys and Girls Club, the program has moved locations but project members will continue to meet with the children in Leon County Schools to collect more letters for the children’s pen pals in Nepal. On March 27th GPE will be hold a fundraiser at Fun Station. GPE will be selling cards redeemable for activities like go-karts and laser tag at a discounted price, along with 20 game tokens (a $24 value). Contact any GPE member or our Facebook page if you want to save money and have fun for a good cause! Thursday night is also pizza night ($3.99 for a Large Pizza) and proceeds go towards projects in Nepal so don’t forget to mention GPE! Now that the official Nepal project team has been chosen, volunteer bonding experiences, fundraising events, and planning meetings have been heavily underway. Last week, the team spent two days volunteering at the non-profit organization, The Boys and Girls Club, in Tallahassee. On the first day, the volunteers opened with a big “Namaste!” and told the kids some interesting and fun facts about Nepal. The second day, the team returned to pass out pen pal letters that had been written to them last summer by the children from the scout troop in Nepal. The children loved the letters from their pen pals and wrote back with some great stuff! This week, GPE Nepal members have been busy working alongside the fundraising committee to create a Holi Day fundraiser for the Indian festival that celebrates the “good” over “bad”. Members are helping bring information about this wonderful culture to FSU campus and raise money for all of Global Peace Exchange’s sustainable development projects commencing this summer. Students will be able to purchase white t-shirts and colorful powder in order to enjoy a traditional celebration at the event this March! The exact date is soon to be announced. The GPE Nepal volunteers for 2014 have been selected! Congratulations to Corey Goode, Rebekka Flam, Krizia Barker, and Taylor Newman, all led by Project Directors Sophee Payne and Catherine Annis. Check the "Meet the Team" tab later this week to learn more about our awesome volunteers and directors!
Volunteer DevelopmentRight now, we are in the application process of selecting volunteers. The deadline for all volunteer applications is 1/31, so check back after that date to meet our team!
We also will be hosting several fundraising events in the near future. We have all been very busy in Meghauli, where the opportunities to assist Clinic Nepal are seemingly limitless, as are the ambitions and the willingness of the community members here. To accommodate this, we have split our team up into three groups, with two team members focusing on each facet of our project in order to better serve and understand the need there as well as plan for years to come. We definitely could not accomplish all that we do without Saurav, our constant guide and savior, and Gabby, our British friend who is one part boundless energy, two parts comic relief, and all innovation (we added her to our Meet the Team page!). To begin, we joined Meagan and Gabby, two medical interns, and two Nepali volunteer doctors at one of the health camps provided by Clinic Nepal, which are rare in the hot summer and monsoon season. We are working on gathering more information on what a medical intern does on a daily basis at the Friendship Clinic as well as how they can participate in the health camps, what it takes to implement a health camp, what current special treatments are needed by Clinic Nepal patients, and how GPE can contribute more to this facet of Clinic Nepal in the future. Gabby has also written a report on her daily efforts at the clinic. Additionally, Joa has discussed with Singh the possibility of providing menstrual cups, such as the Diva Cup, at future gynecological health camps, in order to further promote the Clinic Nepal's efforts to reduce unnecessary waste and provide a more sanitary and sustainable alternative to women. Really excited about this, because it could make a huge difference in the lives of young girls going to school as well as all the women are so busy every day doing housework, taking care of their children, working in the fields, and often balancing several other responsibilities on top of that. Currently, cloth pads, often inconvenient and unsanitary, and disposable pads, expensive and also uncomfortable, are the main sources. Menstruation is a stigma in Nepali culture where menstruating women often should not cook, enter the kitchen, or sometimes touch male members of their family, so the added inconvenience of having a period, especially without Midol, heating pads, and other Western comforts, can be enough to push a young girl to stop going to school or miss out on other opportunities. Sophia, Gabby, and Isabela have been working with the Wolfgang Linke Kindergarten teachers in order to further improve the content and efficiency of the Montessori style education offered. There are three age groups: Play (2-3 years old), Nursery (3-4 years old), and Lower Kindergarten (LKG) (4-5 years old). Last year, WLK only had Play and Nursery groups, but in the past year WLK continues to grow and different volunteers come to contribute their time and effort (more useful art murals decorate the walls this year!) and more tables (following in the same fashion as ours last year), so they have added LKG and plan to add an Upper Kindergarten (UKG) soon. Each class presents its own challenges and opportunities. In the beginning, the GPE Nepal would help conduct lessons and corral children, but it became apparent that this would not be sustainable once they left Meghauli. Instead, volunteers began to more closely observe WLK and most importantly listen to and brainstorm with the teachers specifically about wanted to improve or change. The result has been that the teachers believe in their own ability and creativity, which has led them to work on establishing a structure to their daily routine. Now there is a rotation schedule to replace the old system of one teacher per age group. Under the new schedule, each teacher has one or two subjects they specialize, with cooking duty rotating. The idea was all their own, and the volunteers merely helped facilitate the implementation in a manner that could be more easily sustained. Ryan also started leading morning yoga at the beginning of every day which the teachers have now taken over and Joa is working on painting a small mural on the wall that illustrates the positions. Ian, Gabby, and Joa painted a mural that is currently being used to teach colors and shapes in the LKG room. Tess and Joa also painted a small mural in the main room that lists the days of the week. The team also improved the alphabet wall mural in the Nursery room from last year. In addition to implementing a new daily schedule, the volunteers have been having intermediate English lessons with the teachers every day after the students go home. The hope is that this will greatly improve the communication between the teachers and future volunteers as well as improve the ability to teach the kindergarten students correct English pronunciation and phrases. The teachers will have notes and worksheets so they can recall the English lessons and be able to show new volunteers their progress in order to keep learning English throughout the year. Additionally, a basic English language instruction book has been provided as a reference for new teachers to the kindergarten. Ian and Joa have been working to plan the summer camp with the Clinic Nepal Friendship Scout Troop. The language barrier between volunteers and scouts can be difficult but is ameliorated by the presence of Saurav acting as translator and much more, and it is obvious that the scouts derive worthwhile perspectives on how to interact with their peers. Ian, with ample experience in teambuilding challenge course exercises, has led the scouts through games that require a team effort, positive group dynamics, and innovative thinking. These activities test the scouts’ abilities to communicate with each other, work together to accomplish tasks, and recognize progress and regression within their team. We combined debriefs of these activities with lessons on leadership and followership, culture and communication, and working as a team to achieve a shared vision. This effort has proven to be a favorite component for the scouts because all of the learning occurs either during or after a simple but challenging game, and it can be applied to their efforts in Meghauli. In the coming week, this new knowledge will be put to the test as the scouts engage their community in order to affect their own positive, sustainable changes. We encouraged them to pursue their collective vision for improving Meghauli after we helped them define it, by simply asking questions, such as, “What do you want to see change in your community?” The scouts all agreed on three main areas and have split up into groups to organize their efforts: teaching their community and WLK about the importance of personal hygiene and water sanitation, teaching their community about taking care of the environment and using the reusable bags GPE Nepal is donating, and improving their scout room and scout group. More on that to come later! Volunteers are also incorporating interactive lessons on subjects of particular interest to the scouts, including art, music, science, and English. Tess and Ryan have focused on organizing English language lessons for roughly 30 adults all varying in age, location, occupation, and reasons for requesting and attending the English classes. Some want to improve communication with their English-speaking guests, while others simply wish to help the occasional lost traveler. Local businessmen and women would like to expand their business' capabilities, while young high school graduates hope to increase their potential employment opportunities. Four classes have been established, each catering to a different level of English language knowledge: one at the basic level (Ryan and Joa), one at the intermediate level (Ian and Gabby), one at the advanced level (Tess), and the fourth class is with the WLK teachers (Sophia, Gabby, and Isabela). An extensive amount of research, some helpful donations provided by family of GPE volunteers, and a lot of trial and error has resulted in relatively successful English language learning despite lack of training. However, four weeks of lessons every morning (7am-8am) is not nearly enough time to learn a foreign language. Additionally, all students face various obstacles preventing them from attending consistently, such as rice planting season, mandatory housework, tourist homestays, and school exams. We also found that allowing young scout students to attend was discouraging to adults and we spent a couple days confused as to why the adults were no longer attending until we found the reason and told the scouts they could no longer attend. In addition to attendance, we have been collecting other data including occupation, reasons for learning, best time of day, best time of year, and best location for future lessons. With all of this knowledge in mind, we hope to plan English lessons for the project next year around these needs, including knowing the right time to come, the right time of day to teach, and the right kind of class structure to implement. Accordingly, both Meghauli and Global Peace Exchange want this to be a sustainable project, and in order to continue we need your help. If you are an adventurous, motivated student looking to take initiative and be a part of a rewarding experience that directly benefits communities abroad, join GPE this semester. Immersing yourself in service within another culture does not only help others, but also allows for self-development in a unique, well-rounded way. As you can see, we need a varied group composed of individuals interested in early education, the medical field, teaching English as a foreign language, community development, leadership and teambuilding, and, of course, sustainable development. In our free time some of us have gone on a walk or a boat ride or an elephant ride through the Chitwan National Park to see rhino and more up close. We also all went for an elephant bath, which was an experience any of us will soon forget. We also managed to find a fellow 'Nole all the way out in Meghauli, Chitwan, Nepal! He unfortunately could not tell us where he got his hat from or what Florida State University or the Seminoles were, but what a globalized coincidence! We are also enjoying dherai mitho Nepali khanna (very delicious Nepali food) every day! We now leave you with some other worthy shots taken in and around Meghauli.
Namaste! We have been so busy with our preparations for our project and also the Weebly website editor is a pretty heavy loud for this Nepali Internet connection, so just now getting around to updating everyone on how the trip is going so far. There is a lot to tell! We arrived safely in at the Kathmandu Airport on June 12th and were greeted by Sunil and Saurav Bhandary, two nephews of Hari Bhandary, founder of Clinic Nepal and currently visiting sponsors all over Europe for the summer. Saurav attends Birmingham Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama and has not been back to Nepal in three years, but came this summer so that he could be part of our team and now we cannot imagine the trip without him. Advice for anyone traveling to Kathmandu: Don’t let yourself get swindled by the tourist trap helpers who will grab your luggage and pack a taxi for you without even asking and then demand tips. If you didn’t request a service, and moreover if you refused a service and it was forced upon you, there is no reason to feel guilty for not tipping. Acting awkward and passively avoiding the conversation by rummaging around in one’s bag does not help! Once out of the parking area of the airport, speeding along the unmarked and almost entirely undirected roads of Kathmandu is a culture shock in the face right off the bat, where the traffic is made up of swerving cars, packed buses, motorbikes (Sunil road along beside our van), scooters, bicycles, vendors, students, workers, cows, dogs, and more. Our first few days in Nepal were spent in Kathmandu and were a mix of project planning and preparation and sight-seeing. Saurav and Sanjay took us to Bhaktapur Durbar Square on our first day. Next, we visited Boudanath and Swayambounath, more commonly known as the Monkey Temple, and Sunil took us to try some Nepali fast food, including samosa (large fried vegetable and chick pea wontons) and tarkali (spicy vegetable soup), which had us sweating on a hot day from the spice but afterward we bought a couple kilos of sweet and juicy lychee fruit and washed it down with more cool lychee juice. The next evening, we went to Pashupatinath, the cremation temple dedicated to Shiva, the god of destruction, and afterward we all shared a meal at Sunil’s restaurant, Café Wether Spoon, where we took a break from the traditional Nepali diet of dhal bhat (rice and lentils) and all agreed we picked the perfect team. We spent one day unable to do much outside plan and prepare for our implementation of a summer school in Meghauli because we learned by word of mouth that there was going to be a strike (bholi bhanda cha), meaning no transportation and no open businesses for the day. Fortunately, our friend Keith, an FSU alumnus working as a consulate in the Kathmandu embassy, was able to come meet with us at Hari’s house and share his stories as a consulate as well as his insight into how he was accepted into the foreign service. Just before we left for Meghauli, Srijana Bhandary, Hari’s wife and also super woman power mother, bargained down the prices of wholesale school supplies at the local bazaar for our donations to the Wolfgang Linke Kindergarten, Friendship Scout Troop, and Asha Kokiran Children’s Hostel. Srijana has been an amazing didi (older sister) to all of us and made sure we always had delicious Nepali food (mitho Nepali khanna) and boiled water (tato pani). We will miss her very much and hope to see her again before we leave Nepal. We also hope we get to see Pulga (means flea in Spanish), Srijana's younger sister, Anjana's adorable pug! We arrived in Meghauli on June 18th and met Meagan, a Canadian medical student studying in Ireland, and Gabby, a British student using her gap year to study abroad before she returns to join the army as a nurse. Even though we have now only been in Meghauli for five days, it feels like so much longer due to how much we have accomplished every day. More to come on that later!
Check out the Facebook event page so you can invite your friends to come out and enjoy some really delicious food and drink for a great cause this Tuesday! Just give your cashier one of your fundraiser coupons to contribute 10% of your purchase from either Hiro's or Roboto's to Global Peace Exchange to assist in our summer projects in Rwanda, Uganda, and Nepal. Feel free to print one coupon or several to share. You can also get your coupon from a GPE friend or we will be handing them out in the Free Speech Zone at FSU between the Oglesby Union and Bellamy building tomorrow. |
Stay updated!
The GPE Nepal team will be posting official updates on the progress of our project as we are able to from our locations in Kathmandu, Meghauli, and Daldale. Archives
August 2014
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