Holiday Greetings

Greetings!

Happy holiday season. Hope all is well with you and your family especially during this global pandemic. Unfortunately, like many, I also tested positive for COVID-19 recently while coming to Kathmandu from our schools in Western Nepal for the festival break; however, all our children and staff were safe. Now I am fully recovered and our team is busy on the ground. If you have not read our annual report 2019, please download it here: http://impactschools.ngo/uploads/reports/lq91IBR1jgV55aSY0WMfsWUKVu6fbQYN3a8.pdf

Here in our two remote villages in the district of Kalikot in Western Nepal, where our two schools are located, our schools' teams have been taking an active role to support our schools and our communities affected by the heavy monsoon rain and COVID-19. A few months back, we were able to distribute food to last for a month to 160 families in need of food through our first school, Modern Model Residential School. We also distributed 8,000 masks and sanitizers to children and school staff in our region, and 10,000 more are scheduled to be distributed this week. Furthermore, we are planning to distribute masks, sanitizers and soaps to over 50,000 more children in our region this month so that they can go to school with basic safety measures.

*Emergency Food Relief Distribution Program*

*Masks and Sanitizers Distributing Program*

Furthermore, to keep our schools and our hostel facility safe, we have strict safety measures in place. With mandatory masks, social distancing, proper handwashing and sanitation and a temperature check-up facility at school and at our hostel, we have been able to start our schools for the last five months in two hours shifts maintaining 50% of students at schools in each shift. Also, with bunk bed systems being installed and two hostel buildings being built in time, we were able to have individual beds for our 30 orphans and children in need at our hostel facility to increase social distancing. Our children are happier and safer to have individual beds.

*Classes with safety measures and social distancing*

*Hostel with an individual bunk bed to increase social distancing*

Here at the two schools that we manage, we have completed fully earthquake resistant two school buildings, two hostel buildings and 10 toilets, built with locally produced and eco-friendly earth bricks. A 4.1 kW solar power system is also recently installed at the hostel facility. The new infrastructures have tremendously helped us to keep our children at our schools and at our hostel facilities safe with social distancing measures during this time of COVID-19.

We wouldn't be able to take these important steps without the support of generous organizations and individuals in our network who have trust in our work to impact the lives of children and communities in some of the most remote villages in Nepal, and possibly the world. I, on behalf of Impact Schools, would like to thank you so much for your continued support during these times of need.

Even though we accomplished so much during the last couple of months, there are still so many challenges. Because of more free time than before, our hostel children do not feel as engaged all the time as before, and school children also seem to be bored sometimes just being in classroom settings. Also, COVID-19 has taught us to be more self-reliant in growing food for the hostel children and staff as the supply of food from cities can be interrupted time and again because of COVID-19 and because of our geographical remoteness. Thus, we are in need of more agricultural land to grow more crops and vegetables. Also, we need to manage our existing spaces and also add spaces so that the children would have better learning and playing spaces. To raise funds for these spaces, we have created a campaign on the GlobalGiving platform as a participant in their Giving Season Accelerator Program, where each participating charity is required to raise at least $5,000 from 40 unique donors by the end of December.

Today, Dec 9, it is GlobalGiving's Bonus Day. The more we raise today, the more we win from GlobalGiving's $20,000 Incentive Fund. GlobalGiving also has two $1,000 prizes for the organization that raises the most funds and the organizations that inspires the most unique donors to give to their project. Please donate to our campaign through the following link or by clicking on the 'give now' button below that will take you to our campaign page: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/outdoor-learning-and-playing-space-in-rural-nepal/

Thank you so much to you all.

Please take care. Stay safe, stay healthy.

Prakash Bista, Founder/President

Impact Schools’ Update

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