Support for Learning

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Support for Learning Programme

Our charity exists to provide high quality support for learning for vulnerable children living in our HYF centre in Kathmandu. The Himalayan Youth Foundation aims to provide care and education for 100 orphaned and vulnerable Nepalese children based in its purpose-built centre in Kathmandu. Each child is individually sponsored and the project aims to support children in their native culture providing them with the learning tools and job skills necessary to raise the quality of life for themselves, their families and their communities at large.

We are committed to turning children from a life of illiteracy and deprivation towards happiness in themselves and value to others. We wish to provide improved access to education with better life opportunities promoting greater inclusion, increased progress, higher attainment and improved health and well-being.

This programme aims to enhance and enrich the basic provision currently made to support the children’s learning by providing improved access to educational resources, books, ICT hardware and software.

Programme Summary

The Support For Learning program is based at our centre in Kathmandu and aims to deliver the very best training for staff so that they are able to effectively support our vulnerable children’s learning.

We wish to establish a learning resource base within the centre based around a new library where the children will be able to research and complete homework as well as enjoying access to a range of good age-appropriate reading material. We wish to encourage the children to further improve their functional literacy skills by providing better access to stimulating and exciting new books.

By providing solar power units we hope we can deliver much needed improvements to the very limited and erratic electricity supply. This will enable the children to access new computer equipment and software with which we will teach our children the study skills they need to enable them to make greater progress and achieve higher attainment. We will specifically teach the children a range of learning strategies which they can apply when completing homework tasks or revising examination work. Our aim is to raise overall attainment and improve examination results for this vulnerable child population thereby improving their life chances and potential to access higher education.

Being recognised as a centre of excellence will help our centre to recruit/ retain the best quality staff who have the desire to train to a higher level who will hopefully go on to work at other institutions within the region.

What We Need

This programme will raise funds to provide a learning base at the centre which would include the following.

  • Solar Panels to provide power for the children’s study room
  • Lap top computers which operate on minimum power
  • Software
  • Internet Access
  • Library/learning resource furniture
  • Books and resources
  • Staff Training
  • Mentors expenses for senior children programme
  • Tutors and additional support
  • Additional educational equipment

Cost of the resources needed £39,000

Life for Nepalese children can be very harsh. More than 90% of the population is illiterate and living under the poverty line and life expectancy is just 50 years. Children are expected to work long hours in the fields on a diet of rice and lentils. Families live crowded together, often in just one room, in basic wooden huts with their animals. Education, if it exists at all in overcrowded village schools is very limited and opportunities to live a better life, away from poverty and deprivation are practically non-existent. The Himalayan Youth Foundation UK was established as a charity in 2008 to make a real difference to the lives of the poorest and most deprived children.

Education opens the doors to so many opportunities and that is the main focus of the Himalayan Youth Foundation UK which not only promises to care for these children, to feed them, keep them warm, safe and happy, but also give them the tools to help them work towards a better life.

Our aim is to ensure we develop the very best practice in supporting our children’s learning. Within our organisation there is a commitment to provide high quality teaching and care to all our vulnerable children based on their individually assessed needs. We believe this integrated, seamless approach with care and education is the most effective way of providing children with a holistic learning environment that will enable them to develop as forward thinking young people who will participate as fully as possible in life and make a positive contribution to their community.

Children will benefit by:

  • Increased competencies of staff.
  • Shared expertise of professionals and our carers working with the same aim.
  • Increased access to the curriculum providing solutions to the barriers that prevent access.
  • Provide improved access to a consistent electricity supply enabling the children to play and learn more effectively
  • Greatly improved access to ICT equipment and support.
  • Improved ICT research and technical skills
  • Improvement in communication skills
  • Increased levels of progress
  • Higher attainment in school
  • Better examination results
  • Access to a new library providing a rich and age-appropriate range of resources.

Professionals will benefit by:

  • Increased knowledge about how they can support the children’s learning program.
  • More specialist training opportunities. This Support For Learning program will be made available to all children who may require specialist intervention in order to be able to participate in society to the best of their ability. In addition, we wish to:
  • Disseminate best practice in supporting learning for vulnerable children.
  • Enable our vulnerable children to enhance their communication, physical and social abilities and manage their own personal development.
  • Reach out and support more vulnerable children who require support for learning.
  • Ensure staff who attend the training courses will feel that they have gained specialist knowledge which will enhance their abilities within their role which in turn, will meet the vulnerable children’s needs more effectively.

We currently have an English special needs teacher working at our centre providing training and support and hope to have two further volunteers in place for September 2014. We need to provide them with the equipment and resources to do the job and mage a real difference for these vulnerable children. With your help we can make this possible.