How you can help
Funding the school
The school is majority funded with money from sponsors, and partly with money from a shop selling Tibetan jewellery and curios, which is run by Yeshi’s family. The monthly expenditure, by is £14 per child, per month. This covers food, salaries, house rent, medical care, clothing etc.
To date we have been able to keep the school going with the income from regular donations from a small group of loyal sponsors, fund raising events and the income from the sale of jewellery. Gradually we have managed to find more people to support the school, thus the school has been able to grow in size to its current number of 120 children.
2009 – We need to build a new school !
The landlord of the previous school has sold it and we were forced to leave at the end of December 2008. The staff have been desperately looking for anywhere suitable in Pokhara to rent, but to no avail.
Pokhara is densely populated and land is at a premium as it’s sandwiched between mountains and a lake. Our only option, if we don’t want the school to close permanently, is to build a new school. This would also give the added benefit of being able to build ‘fit for purpose’ and give the ability to support more desperately needy children.
We need to raise £100,000, and we need your help, so please make a donation.
Breakdown of the costs for building the new school
The new school and orphanage is planned to be built on the outskirts of Pokhara. Yeshi has supplied this drawing to show the vision of his dream building for the children. It will have two stories, 20 rooms on each floor and each room to be 15 X 15 feet (20m2). The area of the land which is being bought is 40 X 40 metres (1600m2) .
The new school will have the capacity to cater for up to 200 children, which also helps Yeshi achieve a further dream of offering more orphans and very poor children the chance of an education. Yeshi has supplied us with the following estimates of costs.
Build costs
| Land | 1600m2 outskirts of Pokhara | £45,000 |
| Building | 400m2, 2 stories | £35,000 |
| Furniture | Beds, desks, chairs | £7,000 |
| Equipment | See below for breakdown | £13,000 |
| TOTAL | £100,000 | |
Equipment
| Library books and equipment | £1,900 |
| Computers, IT system, ongoing support | £6,250 |
| Science lab with equipment | £3,850 |
| Musical equipment | £1,000 |
| TOTAL | £13,000 |
Annual running costs
| 12staff members | £9,620 |
| Provisions for 120 children (uniforms, stationary, games) | £3,810 |
| Food, electricity, water, telephone, office | £6,351 |
| TOTAL | £19,781 |
These costs are based upon an exchange rate at time of costs provided (2008) of £1 : NRs.120