During the winter, when temperatures dip far below zero during the day, the teachers and students from schools in the Upper Mustang region pack up their belongings and move to lower altitudes to continue their education. Essentially, there is a winter ‘migration’ of schools to warmer areas of Nepal for around four months of the year.

At the end of 2014, we met with teachers and the children from the Chhonup VDC of Upper Mustang who had completed a three-day journey from their mountain home at an altitude of 3,800 meter to the warmer outskirts of the city of Pokhara. They rented a one-room building as a boarding school for four months, after which they return back to their homes in the warmer months.

The children slept on mattresses a few inches thick on a bare concrete floor. A courtyard at the rear of the building, covered with plastic tarpaulins and furnished with plastic chairs, were their classrooms. Over the years, they collected enough money to purchase land West of Pokhara where they wanted to build their own school. They did not have enough funding to commence the construction of the school.

In 2015, we were the first to contribute funding to commence the school construction project. We also teamed up with our friends from the US based charity, HANDS in Nepal, who also contributed to the construction effort. Over the years, a large group of Korean donors contributed the significant portion of the funds to finish the first floor of the building in 2017, and the remaining funding from a variety of international groups to add a second and last floor which was completed in late 2018. Our contribution was acknowledged with a plaque that was fixed to the upper floor wall in April 2019.

We also provided educational support for the school in 2016 with the purchase of educational materials and placed an experienced teacher at the school for three months to help with teaching and the professional development of local teachers.
 
 

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