Namaste, Jambo and Hello to our Mondo supporters!
We have some fantastic news to announce, after a period of ‘Due Diligence’ we have just made a short step across the border from Tanzania into Uganda, to work in our 5th country, and have agreed to support the Sky is the Limit Project (SITL), as we take over its stewardship from the Ecologia Youth Trust, who have been supporting the Project since 2014. Liza Hollingshead, EYT Director, is retiring this year and was introduced by Mondo’s past CEO, Anna Brian, to the Charity, as a potential successor.
They are a great Team at SITL in Uganda, as witnessed by our CEO, Matthew Band, on his recent trip to East Africa in April 2024, taking in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda on his travels, and saw first-hand the scope and impact of the SITL Project, which was started by Mama Rose over 30 years ago, who sadly passed away in 2021, and is now being led by her 5 adult siblings with a real focus on helping the neediest and most vulnerable children and their families in Fort Portal.
The Project comprises a Primary School with over 200 students, a Farm which provides meals for the children, so that they don’t go hungry and a Youth Enterprise Team called ‘Fruits of the Sky’ which is led by some of the original orphans that Mama Rose took under her wing in ‘Noah’s Ark’ many years ago and are now adults; a Doctor, a Teacher, a Mechanic and an Entrepreneur, who want to give back to the Project and the young people, for the help it has given them… some amazing stories and real life impact that is a joy to see!
They are a dedicated and committed Team, worthy of support, who have been ably assisted by Liza and the Trustees at EYT, and it will be a pleasure and a privilege to continue that legacy, working alongside them, and good supporters such as IMECHE (Institute of Mech Engineers) as we focus on developing the School, Farm and Youth Enterprise in the coming years to benefit the needs of the children, families and local community.
As always, our other Projects in Nepal, India, Tanzania and Gambia go from strength to strength, particularly the Saathi Programme in Nepal, led by Jimmy Lama and his HELP Team, which is now looking to build a Teacher Training Centre in Kathmandu to embed and make sustainable the educational work in disadvantaged, rural Schools and we are looking to support, financially, as a tribute and fitting legacy to Anthony Lunch, our Founder, in Mondo’s 20th Anniversary Year!
Alongside this, having just awarded 25 more Scholarships to young people in Nepal, so that they can continue their education in Secondary School, will be 2 special Awards at Masters level, handed out annually, as part of the Anthony Lunch Memorial Fund, which is supported by Mondo and the Lunch Family, for 2 aspiring students, male and female, who are progressing into Higher Education… another first for Mondo HELP!
Our Microfinance Programme led by Erneth & Glory, Mondo Tanzania, continues to lift many ladies and their families out of poverty in Arusha and Moshi by giving them start-up business and agriculture grants, support and training, leading to the setup of Vicoba Groups i.e. Village Community Banks, so that from having very little, they now have food security for their families, healthcare provision, and can pay educational fees for their children, which is life changing.
In India, alongside the RIBS School Facility, we have just secured funding for a further classroom in Alpha Primary School, one of our 12 established partners and are looking at other opportunities to support them with IT infrastructure.
Please see below to read and hear more direct from our Teams in Nepal, India, Tanzania and Uganda.
Last but not least, as part of our 20th Anniversary Year Celebrations, it is still possible to take part in our Mt Everest Base Camp Trek in Nepal with our Chair, Andrew Allright, from the 3rd to 19th October 2024, raising funds for Mondo and our Projects. Please contact Andrew for more details andrew@mondofoundation.org
AND make sure you put a note in your diary to attend the special Mondo Anniversary Dinner 6pm on Thursday 12th September 2024 in London. Please contact Juliet for Ticket details via events@mondofoundation.org
Until next time and thank you for your continued support for Mondo and the communities we serve!
Nepal
SAATHI Teachers Programme
Currently, Saathi Teachers Programme is in its 6th year of operation with the 5th cohort being recently placed. Our Saathi teachers are working in 3 rural municipalities; Panchpokhari RM and Tripurasundari RM in Sindhupalchowk district and Aanbookhaireni RM in Tanahun district.
We have 26 Saathi teachers altogether this year, who are working to enhance the literacy and numeracy skills of students at primary level. 13 of them are the 5th cohort, who started teaching this April. 10 of them are from the 4th cohort and this is their second year, and 3 are from the 3rd cohort who have already completed their 2 years but are continuing this year too.
Upcoming quarterly training
Our quarterly training, scheduled from July 12-14, is the first training of the year, and will bring in 26 of our Saathi teachers together. We want this quarterly training to be a space where we all come together and share our achievements, celebrate together, share challenges, hold spaces for one another, and grow together. We also aim to make this space an opportunity to gain new insights, learn from each other’s experiences, and prepare ourselves for upcoming journeys. It will be a residential training of 3 days so that we can create a space for all to share stories and learn from each other’s practices, and reflect together. Some of the main sessions covered in the training are understanding students and their behaviour, mindfulness for thoughts and emotions management and building resilience in self, self-care, and building writing and skills, and focused content sessions on English and Math. Another key session we are incorporating in this quarterly meet up is the session on Community Action Projects, through which aims to empower and equip Saathi teachers as leaders by engaging them in projects that address grassroots issues, fostering practical solutions, ownership, and responsibility, and driving sustainable, positive change in rural communities. We are really keen to meet them all and hear their stories.
Scholarship Programme Update:
The HELP Scholarship Programme supports students from challenging family backgrounds who have demonstrated strong leadership potential and have some leadership experience in their communities during their school years, along with good academic records. The HELP Scholarship Programme not only provides grants to students but also offers a platform to develop their leadership and other essential skills through various workshops and training sessions. Starting this year, we are planning to integrate mentorship into the scholarship programme, where our pool of mentors will guide and support our scholarship students under close monitoring by the Scholarship team.
We have completed the scholarship for this cycle. The scholarship application form was opened on April 5, 2024, and closed on May 20. We received a total of 184 applications from over 55 schools and more than 15 districts across Nepal. After a review by the Scholarship review team based on standard scholarship rubrics, 95 students were selected for the interview round. Our eight interview team members worked continuously for three days and interviewed all 95 selected candidates, ultimately shortlisting 70 students for the scholarship. The interviews took place from June 11 to June 14. After cross-verification, reference checking, and evaluating the SEE results, we published a list of 47 scholarship awardees. We also offered conditional offers to 13 students and selected 10 students from the second round of selection.
We are planning to hold a Scholarship Award Ceremony on July 27, where we have a workshop to bridge their transition into higher studies and build a sense of community along with scholarship awards distribution.
School Building
We are pleased to share that we have completed building four classrooms with furniture for Shree Langarche Secondary School in partnership with Panchpokhari Rural Municipality. We also supported the school with facilities and equipment to enliven classrooms from ECD to grade 3 as well as installation of playstation targeting youngest children and a better-equipped science lab for the grade 9 and 10. This was the last of the school construction work we took on within the municipality. We shall now focus on working with teachers and students in bettering their actual teaching and learning experience. We are thankful for this opportunity to support the school to reduce their oversized classroom stress, and wish the school happiness and joy ahead.
The school has massive construction work going on to complete their fencing and compound work, which has been funded by various government agencies and needs assistance for completion. The school has also come up with a sudden need for relocation of their existing toilet building in order to widen the playground. As we are increasingly pulling out doing bricks and mortar work, we wanted to highlight these needs to any other organisations working in the sector who could more urgently help with construction of a new toilet building.
Tanzania
It’s been a busy year so far for Erneth and Glory from Mondo Tanzania as they have distributed three new Business and Agricultural Grants. These will support more women within the network, so that they can start to produce a regular income. The support and training provided by Erneth, Glory and their team is comprehensive, intensive and prepares the ladies well for business start-up with ongoing support provided once the businesses are up and running.
They continue to monitor past recipients of the Business and Agriculture grants and provide ongoing VICOBA training to new groups. Erneth and Glory oversee the success of these groups, ensuring that Mondo grant recipients can become self-sustaining, offer their own loans, and foster local business growth. These efforts are yielding positive results and making a real impact on our supported communities.
Additionally, we continue to deploy Community Coordinators to areas receiving Business and Agriculture grants to aid in operations and business success.
Moreover, support has extended to the Longido Blind Unit, where supplies of Braille paper and sanitation equipment arrived at the school. The students also received hospital visits and health check-ups.
Finally we share with you one of many case studies from the beneficiaries of the Agricultural Grant in the Arusha are of Tanzania.
Most of the recipients had no previous experience in farming or business before receiving the grant. However after the grant they have been able to provide food security for them and their family. They now make enough money to support their business, their families and the community.
Meet Mbotor Losieku from Sambasha in Arusha, she is growing Potatoes and received a grant of 450000Tzs.
Mbotor received the grant in 2023 and as you can see below her potato crop at her farm is flourishing, and in the other picture she is at home with her disabled son. He is one of twin sons who are aged 11. The other son is in school at class 4, however she is still carrying and caring for the other. This, unfortunately, caused her husband to leave her several years ago and remain the sole parent. Mbotor has big expectations for the potato farming and is very grateful for this opportunity. She had never grown potatoes before and was previously planting in a small area with beans and maize, which did not yield much produce. But since she received the agriculture training and grant she is anticipating to produce 13 to 15 sacks (bags) of Potatoes this year. Mbotor hopes to sell the sacks of potatoes at the price of 85,000 to 90,000. Tzs per sack which will allow her to provide food, shelter and education for her sons.
Mbotor at her farm growing potatoes Mbotor at home with her sons
Gambia
We bring you fantastic news from Bakary – Kunkujang Nursery School in Gambia 
. The children you can see in the photo are taking part in their graduation ceremony at the nursery school. Congratulations to all of the children taking part.
India
Currently Mondo Challenge Kalimpong is working with 12 schools, located in different areas of Darjeeling and Kalimpong district. From the time when this organisation was established in 2002, it has always aimed to work in rural communities where people are deprived educationally and economically.
Over the past two decades, Mondo Challenge Kalimpong has taken many initiatives in order to develop the rural communities educationally and the majority of these initiatives have been proved to be efficient and valuable. We are so proud that every school and child of the rural communities are doing well. They are always grateful for all kinds of support provided by the organisation.
You can see from the images here that we continue with the Inter Schools Sports Competitions, Dance Competitions and developing our Environmetal Awareness program’s.
For the Inter School Sports Competition the chief guest of the day was Mr. Sanchabir Subba, Chief executive of the Education Department, Gorkha Territorial Administration.
Before the competition was started, the Chief Functionary of MCK, Mr. Santa Rai, on behalf of Mondo Challenge Kalimpong delivered a short speech regarding the objectives of MCK and MF to support schools and organise activities like the Inter School Sports, Dance Competition as well as other activities like the Environment awareness program, teachers training, and volunteering program.
Over all, the Sports program was a great success. In the program around 2000 people including around 450 parents from all participating schools were present in the competition program. All of the parents were proud to have their children taking part in the competition. It was a great opportunity for children to develop their confidence and was a good occasion to interact with children from other schools. All of the children performed at each event very happily and enthusiastically. Every participating child was given a certificate and memento for taking part and in keeping of the spirit of taking part being as important as winning.
The sports program was finished around 4 pm and our chief guest of the day delivered a short speech regarding the importance of the games. He greatly appreciated the initiative taken by MCK and MF U.K and thanked all the participating schools, the hosting school and to the entire team of MF and MCK.
Finally a message from the team in India;
”We would like to express our deepest thanks to the entire team of Mondo Foundation U.K who’s continued support has made all Mondo Challenge Kalimpong’s activities possible. Our sincere thanks to the individual donors for their generous financial support. We very much appreciate your continuous support and help which have always been very encouraging to us.”
Uganda
It is a great privilege and pleasure to connect Sky Is The Limit with Mondo Challenge. When we decided to close Ecologia Youth Trust after 30 years, this project was the one that needed a new host. The project is full of potential to grow, and has a great history. It was started by Mama Rose Mugenyi, a Health Worker who simply could not allow children to live on the streets. She took them home and in time started a Nursery and Primary school to educate them. Sky Is The Limit has never turned away a child whose parents were unable to pay for their school fees.
This is the legacy Ecologia inherited and which we pass on to Mondo Foundation. An important part of our contribution was to provide school meals for all the children, many of whom walk 12km to school every day. This has given them the energy and stamina to engage with school, and with sports, and life in general. Once they graduated from school, many of them became ‘Fruits of Sky’ and have designed a programme to engage other young people in projects to enable employment. The Mama Rose Organic Farm has been developed to provide food for the school, to supplement the need for grants to cover the costs.
There is still much to be done, as Matthew Band and I discovered on our project visit to Sky Is The Limit in April 24. It was both an inspiring and challenging visit. We wish both Sky Is The Limit and Mondo Challenge the very best in this new phase of their development.
Liza Hollingshead
Ecologia Youth Trust
SKY’S COMMUNITY
Sky’s community is a special community founded by Mama Rose on grounds of love, dedication and support to the disadvantaged children in the community. The community believes in giving opportunities to all disadvantaged children thus fostering self-reliance and sustainable self-development.
To achieve the above, different projects were born in Sky’s community among which include;
- Sky is the limit nursery and primary school aims at providing an accessible and equitable education and school meals for all disadvantaged children irrespective of their financial background. This was due to an alarming increase in the number of children who were not going to school, school dropouts, orphaned and destitute children from low-income families.
- Noah’s ark, a home for disadvantaged children especially orphans and those who have no shelter. The aim of the home was to give shelter to children with no parents and no where to live while providing education and basic life skills.
- Fruits of sky which is a youth group for all adults who were once part of the sky’s limit school and Noah’s ark with the aim of uplifting each other and giving a hand in terms of loans to equip them with employment or self-owned businesses thus becoming self-sustaining.
- Mama Rose organic farm, an agricultural project whose aim is to provide healthy agricultural products to the school and Noah’s ark so that the children get well balanced diet with heathy foods. The farm also offers employment opportunities for some of the fruits of sky community individuals.
In the pipeline
- Microfinance project which is aiming at providing small loans to parents and other individuals that have children in the school or can bring in children to the school with the focus of supporting entrepreneurial activities and small businesses, fostering economic independence.
Comments are closed.