Education

/Education

An educationalist’s view – volunteering with a difference

Michael Dennison, an education specialist, tells us about his experiences visiting Mondo partner schools in Nepal and India in May 2018. I recently retired after a 45-year career in education which ranged from a teacher of modern languages, local authority adviser and director of school improvement, head teacher to Government inspector of schools and education consultant. I was looking for additional voluntary activity in the education sector. It was therefore a propitious encounter when I met Hirsh Cashdan, a Mondo Trustee,...

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Thought provoking and humbling experiences in Nepal

Liz (a student mentor/counsellor) and Robert (a retired electronics engineer) tell us about their experiences working and living in a remote village in the Helambu Valley, Nepal. Nothing prepared us for the stunning beauty of the mountains, our daily view on waking up each day in Nakote.  In February in Nepal, the skies are clear and blue, so the Langtang mountain range towered up into the sky in the valley ahead, as we set off down the hill to the school every...

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Growing and smiling at Alpha Nursery

Josephine tells us about the highs and lows of her time working as a volunteer at Alpha Nursery School, based in a remote village in the Himalayas Last time I was in the Himalayas I was six and travelling to Everest base camp with my family. 12 years later I found myself back in the mountains, on my own this time, working in a small school in a poor, isolated community. To say I felt out of my comfort zone would...

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Update on PIQUE – Programme for Improving the QUality of Education – Part 2

In Part 2 of this update on PIQUE, Hirsh Cashdan tells us more about how the schools have taken to the methodology and what is next for PIQUE. If you missed it, read the first part of his blog on PIQUE here. What we asked of the schools We encouraged the schools to take away the proforma which we had designed and populated together following the workshops (including their agreed aspirations and our advice) and to work through a first...

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Update on PIQUE – Programme for Improving the QUality of Education – Part 1

Trustee, Hirsh Cashdan, tells us about Mondo’s work encouraging and enabling schools to take charge of their own destiny. Background to Mondo Foundation’s Support of Schools Mondo Foundation has been working with a variety of schools in three countries – Nepal, NE India and Tanzania – for almost 15 years.   In this time we have funded and, through our local staff in each country, run many programmes aimed at improving the learning experience of the children in the communities where the schools are...

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Children in Kalimpong start the New School Year

Anna Brian, our Programmes Manger, recently visited schools in NE India and reports on the start of a new school year after a tumultuous 2017. 2017 was a difficult year for our partner schools in Kalimpong, NE India. A general strike called by the Ghorkaland Independence Party resulted in the schools being closed for over 3 months, as well as leaving many parents without pay for the same period. However, when I visited in March this year, the situation seemed much more positive. ...

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Butterfly

The Flutter of Human Kindness

  Anyone who has had to pick up the tiny shards of glass from a smashed car windscreen will know how rough they feel on your fingers as you try to dislodge them from the crevice of the car seat or dashboard.  As hard and as sharp as cut diamonds, these worthless, slivers of glass are often all that is left at a crime-scene to show that ‘Vandal’, and his partner in crime, ‘Having a laugh’, have smashed their way into...

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Loughborough students win “Project of the Year” with Mondo in Nepal

Earlier this year, 15 students from Loughborough University spent 10 days working in and around the girls hostel we constructed in Timbu. In helping to prepare the hostel to receive its very first boarders, they put the finishing touches on our long-term project to make it easier for girls to remain in education.  The students also managed to see plenty of Nepal, including a whitewater rafting trip and trekking.  As part of the project, the group also raised funds to provide...

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Creating a space to learn: how can we share experiences from the chalkface?

Stephen Carrick-Davies, CEO of Mondo Foundation, asks what would radical education reformers of the past make of education initiatives being developed in some of the poorest regions of the world today. Joseph Lancaster was a public education innovator who knew a thing or two about running a school on a budget.  Born in 1778 at a time when education in this country was limited to the privileged few, he set up his first school on the floor of his father’s shop. ...

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Collaborating to create greater impact

How small charities can work together to create greater impact – Mondo CEO, Stephen Carrick-Davies, talks about how collaboration can bring great dividends. Theodore Roosevelt got it right when he said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” How many times in our social and professional lives do we get pulled down into the corrosive spiral of comparison?  It’s not just young people who can feel drained by the ‘Boast by Post’ social media culture; it’s permeating into our education system and...

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