First Steps Himalaya early childhood education in Nepal

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About us

About Us
First Steps Board
First Steps Nepal
Global Team

About Us

First Steps Himalaya is a New Zealand registered charity, set up in 2008 by Founding Directors, Fionna Heiton and Durga Aran who wanted to give Himalayan children their rights to a childhood. Namaste!We at First Steps Himalaya are passionate about children and believe that ALL children deserve a good start in life.Our MissionFirst Steps Himalaya works in partnership with disadvantaged communities in the rural Himalaya to promote early childhood development, community health and awareness. Our aim is to ensure that every child is granted their right to a childhood through long term and sustainable positive behavioural changes. Our VisionTo be the leading provider of quality early childhood education throughout the Nepal Himalaya as a Nepali led, trained and run organisation. Our FutureAs part of our strategic plan, we aim to have ten purpose built early childhood centres and 80 community or school based centres covering the entire district of Sindhupalchok, three hours drive from Kathmandu, by 2015. Over 1,800 under 5's, 18,000 school children and the wider community of 230,000 people will benefit from our services in the district. In 2012, we aim to bring on board three of these core centres and 16 school more community based centres.Nepal's FutureHere, at First Steps Himalaya's headquarters, we believe that if we do a really great job, we will put ourselves out of the business of charity work, and into the business of support and mentoring for a new generation of Nepali's. To create a new generation of well educated youth, who are able to take their country to a point where they are independent of foreign aid, and have the strength to take their own strong position on the world stage will be a job well done. This is what we are aiming for.BackgroundDurga grew up in Jitpur, a small village in Sindhupalchok district. The youngest of eight children, life was harsh with no electricity, running water, health or education facilities nearby. The nearest primary school was half an hour's walk and secondary school was two hours hike up and down steep hills. Durga dreamt of going to school but his parents didn't understand the value of education or his right to a childhood. Instead he was sent to look after his sister's child when he was just six years old. When he finally persuaded his father to send him to school, he found there were no resources and the teachers were frequently absent. He was married at 15 years and left home to discover more about the outside world at the age of 18. He worked in the tourist industry for many years running a restaurant and a successful trekking business. Whilst expecting twins in Nepal in 2002, Fionna was stunned by the appalling lack of basic support for pregnant and nursing mothers. They had no information on infant care and lacked guidance on correct weaning foods, often introducing sugar and salt too early. She noticed that most babies were underweight and parents were unaware of their role in their childs development. Poorly educated parents send their children to school at three years old where they are forced to learn by rote. The only thing they learn is to hate school. This is a major contributing factor in Nepals 900,000 primary aged children who do not attend school becoming victims of the next cycle. The SolutionFionna and Durga believe that simple community centres can serve the needs of pre-school children and mothers and babies. Through parent education programmes at the centres, they can help break the cycle of poverty by promoting better parenting methods so that women would value their childs education and fight to keep them in school. By doing this the miserable existence of millions of women and girls could become a thing of the past and children would win their right to a childhood.

No Frame

First Steps Board
No Frame

Chairperson: Cally Stockdale is a photographer. Cally has travelled extensively through Asia and has worked in Nepal and India as a volunteer teacher. She has been supporting a number of families in Tibet, Nepal and India for over 20 years and is passionate about the Himalayan region. She also sponsors a Ugandan granny!

Deputy Chair: Katrina Smith is an award winning broadcaster with More FM in New Zealand and is passionate about music and singing. Katrina has had a longstanding interest in children's and women's rights and supports numerous organisations.

Secretary: Ailsa Cowan, originally from Scotland, now lives in Nelson, NZ with her husband and young family. Ailsa has 20 years experience in Early Childhood Education Care and for 10 years has trained adults to work with young children. Ailsa now owns and manages a highly successful educational toy shop in Nelson.

Treasurer: John Heiton had a long career in the UK with Rolls Royce Ltd as Chief Engineer. John has visited Nepal several times, has raised funds for a water project, sponsors two children at FSH projects and mentors the directors. John is retired and now lives in Nelson to be close to his family.

Anna Seifried has a commercial background, marketing her family wine business in Nelson, NZ. A life changing visit to Nepal in 2009 as a volunteer in a children's home, gave Anna the desire to contribute to the ongoing support of children in Nepal's poorer village communities. Anna has been involved in a number of community groups, though this is her first role with an international charitable trust.

Management Team

Fionna Heiton:

NZ Chief Executive Officer & Founding Director

Fionna has an extensive background in development issues particularly in Nepal where she lived for 6 years working for WaterAid, UNICEF, the Britain Nepal Medical Trust and the British Council.

Fionna with Durga Aran researched an Early Childhood Development project in the Darjeeling hills of West Bengal, India. Fionna studied at the University of California, San Diego on the supervision of adults in early childhood education and holds a post graduate certificate in development management. She has integrated the theory of managing development with her knowledge of the field in Nepal.

She is based in Nelson, New Zealand and travels extensively often with her twins.

Durga Aran:

Chief Executive Officer for Nepal and Founding Director

Durga is Nepali, and was raised in a rural community. Denied an education and his rights to a childhood through necessity, Durga is passionate about granting Himalayan children a chance. Prior to founding the trust, Durga implemented a water and sanitation project in two Nepali villages. Working in rural Nepali communities presents enormous challenges as cultural beliefs and customs can hinder progress in gaining understanding and support of village communities. However, Durga understands the reasons behind these ideas and can break through barriers that few outsiders would be able to tackle. His leadership skills are paramount in convincing local communities to adopt new ways to improve their quality of life.Durga divides his time between Nepal and Nelson, New Zealand where his family are based.

First Steps Nepal First Steps NepalFirst Steps Nepal implements and oversees all projects for First Steps Himalaya with overall supervision by the Founding Director, Durga Aran.First Steps Himalaya organises funding, strategy, future planning and training for the First Steps Nepal Board, its staff and assistants. Local communities wishing to join First Steps Nepal liaise with Durga, who then assesses what their specific needs are and the type of assistance they require, in terms of funding, materials and training support.All communities are expected to provide either land, buildings or failing this, labour towards the centres. This is to ensure that the desire to start a centre is genuine and that the village families have the committment to a new centre. Sometimes new centres are within schools existing premises which are given to First Steps Nepal to upgrade, fit out and then train staff.Once existing staff have been trained to acceptable standards their salary is topped up by First Steps Himalaya. This top up ensures committment by the staff to First Steps Nepal and also rewards and recognises them for their efforts and training.We have comprehesive centre policies, standards and employment terms for all our centres and staff.

Our Staff

We currently employ 10 staff in our centres.

Our Area Supervisor is Leela Giri. Leela is based in Sangachok and has been with us from the beginning. She is a wonderfully friendly and talented lady who has risen to the challenge of running our core centre and over seeing the satellite centres with regular visits. Leela is a firm favourite with our visitors and volunteers. Always cheerful and willing to take on board new ideas, she is a wonderful cook as our guests find out while staying at our village accommodation.

Leela is ably supported by Ranjana Giri. Ranjana, while studying for a degree in English, has proven that the new generation of Nepali youth are enthusiastic to move with the times. She keeps detailed progress reports on all the children in English, updating each week to give a very good overview of the children's progress and the positive effects of our current programs within the centres.

Leela and Ranjana report to Durga, and when Durga is in New Zealand they have regular 'phone and Skype calls to keep the Directors up to date.

Durga Aran, our Founding Director.

Durga is a shining example of how determination and a clear goal can move mountains! Durga has a wonderful sense of humour and is a great cook - and not only of Nepali food! The NZ Board always enjoy events at his house!

First Steps Nepal Board A team of nine Nepalis from around the Sangachok District and Kathmandu comprise the current board. Chairperson: Durga AranDeputy Chair: Roshan Giri originally from Sangachok, has his own business and is a qualified lawyer. Roshan is keen to help his community and recently raised funds to purchase a village based ambulance. Roshan divides his time between Kathmandu and Sangachok.Secretary: Wangjung Lama is the principal of Sangachok College. Wangjung is keen to introduce child friendly teaching methods in schools.Treasurer: Barun Giri is a teacher at Jitpur school and is active in improving his village. Barun was instrumental in bringing clean drinking water to his village.Board Members: Kamal Giri is a local businessman with a passion for helping others. Kamal hosts our visitors at his small lodge and often helps his wife Leela with the cooking (very unusual in Nepal!)Kika Nepal is the ECD 'Education Research Officer for the district responsible for 22 schools. Narayan Giri, Dadhiram Parajuli and Keshab Giri have also recently joined the board.

Some of our Staff with Durga centre background

Sangachok

Location of First Steps Headquarters in Nepal

Global Team

Advisors to the Board - NZ

Raf Manji began his career as a risk analyst in investment banking before moving into trading. He traded the global financial markets for 10 years on behalf of investment banks in his home town of London before an epiphany led him into the field of environmental sustainability. He helped develop the Trucost Environmental Sustainability framework before moving to New Zealand in 2002.

Since then he has been an angel investor and start up entrepreneur, as well as starting the online think tank the Sustento Institute. He also works for several volunteer organisations in the community focused on budgeting and mentoring. He has degrees in economics and political science, which support his research into building a more sustainable society.

Kieron Goodwin, originally from Canada is a past Chairman of FSH. He has had a highly successful corporate career holding a diverse range of executive positions including Head of Corporate Marketing for the Bank of New Zealand, Business Development Manager for the Starship Foundation and Executive Director of the Save the Kiwi Trust. Kieron lives in Richmond, Nelson with his wife and daughter.

Kieron provides strategy planning and analysis for the charity during this time of fast development.

UK Co-ordinator

Hilary Gordon is a member and past president of the Rotary Club of Oldmeldrum in District 1010, Scotland. She is also the Rotary district literacy coordinator which lead to her interest in FSH. Until 2009 Hilary was a head teacher of a special school in Aberdeen with 30 years experience of working in the scottish education system with children and adults.

Hilary is a star fundraiser and a wonderful supporter! As well as co-ordinating with local Rotary clubs in Scotland she has been the mover and shaker with Rotary International, Nepal, and now Canada!

Australian Co-ordinator

Lesley Cameron: "I always knew that visiting Nepal could be life changing and spiritual. I recently spent two months experiencing the thrills of adventure in the Himalaya. My richest experiences were about connecting with the people, in particular the beautiful children who so obviously need help in order that they will have a future. I came away wanting to do something to help the Nepali children.

I am proud to be associated with First Steps Himalaya and enjoy introducing others to all that this wonderful organisation is achieving."

Our Projects

Early Childhood
Schools
Community Health

Early Childhood
Our ProjectsWe work in the mid hills of Sindhupalchok District three hours north east of Kathmandu, Nepal. This area is largely neglected in terms of development and has high rates of school dropout, child labour and female child trafficking. Awareness of the importance of education and good parenting is poor throughout the district.Schools in rural Sindhupalchok are inadequately resourced and are staffed by untrained or poorly trained teachers. Young teachers are frustrated and lack motivation due to out of date and poorly run school management. This results in a high level of teacher absenteeism, poor teaching and children who receive ineffective education. The success rates of the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) is extremely poor in the district.We currently have 12 Early Childhood Development Projects operating in Sindhupalchok District. Following the success of the initial Sangachok early childhood project, First Steps Himalaya opened a further 6 satellite centres in the same area in November 2010, and five centres in 2011. These have been generously funded by Rotary clubs in Scotland and Nepal as well as a matching grant from Rotary International, plus individual donors and sponsors.We are now working in Sangachok Primary school, at their request, in Class 1. The Nepalese Government is changing their national educational framework around their curriculum. The school's request to help with the implementation will give us the the experience and credibility to allow us to work alongside other government schools if requested in our project areas. We are thrilled at this opportunity to continue to work with our children so that they make an easier transition from the ECDs to school. We have kitted out and provided resources for Class 1 and have already given extra training to five staff from the school, including a material resource making work shop. We hope to start a Class 2 project at Sangachok in April 2012.Our approach: By learning through play, the children increase confidence, make friendships, learn to respect themselves and others and develop their mental and physical skills. We use a play based approach combined with local cultural needs to provide a solid foundation for the children. Our teachers are all Nepali and are trained in Nepal. The children learn in Nepali and in their own ethnic languages as well as a little English.Parents never cease to be amazed at the developmental progress of their children and positive changes in behaviour. Our parent education programme teaches parents how to better care for their children in terms of health and safety, nutrition and nurturing. We also offer parent education classes regarding nutrition and health.Core CentresSangachok: The purpose built 'Nava Jyoti' (New Ideas) community Early Childhood Development (ECD) centre at Sangachok was officially opened in April 2010 by Mahashram Sharma, Director General of Education, Government of Nepal. The centre provides quality child friendly pre-school classes for children 2-5 years, 6 days a week.The library at Sangachok has become a focal point for young people in the village who now love spending time meeting their friends, reading, playing chess and other games. The popular 'Saturday Club' for children 8-16 years old is frequently packed especially on art days!Satellite CentresHarre: This Tamang community have built their own ECD classroom and are determined to give their children a better future. In a short space of time the children have made remarkable progress and are better prepared for school.Jitpur: The under 5's at Jitpur used to be crowded into an unsafe dark room. Now they have a freshly painted child friendly learning environment where children are developing a love of learning. Sangachok Bhanjang: The biggest village in the area had no early childhood facilities until First Steps Himalaya established a class for under 5's. The government of Nepal seeing our success will soon partner us in service provision.Pokhare: The children of Pokhara adore the new play materials, singing songs and drawing in this poor village where until recently the dilapidated school was the only provider of education. Bhimtar: Bhimtar is situated one hours walk steep downhill from Sangachok and the road.The people belong to the Majhi fishing caste and are economically and socially deprived. Many of the children lack proper clothing and most adults are landless agricultural labourers.Bhimtar has an ECD led by a determined young woman who was doing her best with no resources and over 35 children attending daily. Thanks to our project, she now has a co- worker, training and regular support. We have supplied the empty shelves with learning materials and toys. The children of Bhimtar now have play dough, puzzles, art and craft and much more.Bachaladevi: We have recently renovated and updated this school based ECD run by a very capable facilitator who until recently taught over 20 pre-schoolers on her own each day. With our help, her ECD is now freshly painted, is well resourced and she now has an assistant to help in the classroom. Irku: Young children were taught by the rote learning method here until our project began. The staff had no knowledge of play based methods and have been amazed at the success of our new project. Our young facilitator is embracing the new methodology and we are very excited to be partnering this government school. Chautara Women's Cooperative: This group not only approached us for assistance but never gave up in their bid to become one of our projects. Situated in the small town of Chautara, district HQ of Sindhupalchok, this ECD is now full of happy little faces. We are supporting the staff to deliver quality early childhood services and have provided learning resources. Harre School: This is our second project in the deserving community of Harre. This new project is based at the newly built Harre School and will provide a brand new pre-school service for children at this end of the village. Our new facilitator is very able and we will shortly be opening our doors to around 20 children.Support to schools First Steps Himalaya is committed to quality education for all children. As our older children at the centres reach 5 years old and move to school, we have continued to support them by providing teacher training at the local schools in our project areas. Volunteer teacher trainers work with local school teachers to disseminate child friendly teaching methods. Now older children can have fun whilst learning maths, science, and English.One of our great successes at Sangachok has been the establishment of the Library with help from the Yusef Abubaker Memorial Trust and subsequently, Room to Read and Books Abroad. There is an active Saturday Club for the school children to read, have art classes, play chess and try out some of the puzzles. We mentioned it before but it is worth stating again!! The popular games such such as chess, draughts, jenga and solitaire are played daily during mid morning and lunch breaks.

New made sand pit
Sand pit in action
Donated fruit at morning break
Pokhare centre
Setting up a new centre
Yusef Abubaker Library
Learning all about painting
jigsaws

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Our Programmes We provide on going training for our staff at the early childhood centres and now for the teachers at the schools the children attend after leaving. It is all very well us giving a great start to children only to find they loathe school because nothing has changed at the next level up. Quite a few children return to the centre despite being of school age as they are so bored in their rote learning, repetitive and dull classes.Training is provided in a variety of ways, including on site training with Nepali trainers, qualified teachers and trainers from overseas and short trips (3 to 4 days) to Kathmandu to visit trainers in the city. As well as this the British School in Kathmandu has allowed our teachers to sit in on classes to see how systems work overseas. As you can imagine, there was much to interest and wonder at!We feel it is very important that the teachers and support staff are taught as much as possible in Nepali or their first language. This also applies to the children learning in their first language. It is a well known fact that children learn faster when being taught in their native tongue.

Schools
Working with the Schools in our DistrictSchools in rural Sindhupalchok are inadequately resourced and are staffed by untrained or poorly trained teachers. Young teachers are frustrated and lack motivation due to out of date and poorly run school management. This results in a high level of teacher absenteeism, poor teaching and children who receive ineffective education. The success rates of the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) is extremely poor in the district.Another problem is the school system itself. Much of the curriculum is learnt by rote, with very little imagination required or thinking outside of the box. Text books are used for almost everything, and the contents, questions and answers are ''in the book.'' Children who are 'successful' have the ability to memorise large amounts of information for regurgitation at exam time. There is almost no understanding that children can learn in many different ways, and so many children fall through the cracks because the teaching style doesn't help them learn.Children who fail their exams have to stay down a year until they pass that year's exam. So it is not unusual to get a 15 year old in with 12 year old classes. As you can imagine, the enthusiasm for continuing with education drops off rapidly as time goes by. To be quite frank the majority of school lessons are deadly boring! I know - I've taught within the system!Children who leave school to become teachers repeat the whole process, as they know no other way of learning and teaching. Teaching is seen as a good job, because it is a Government job and therefore, they have in effect a job for life. Those who are not motivated to turn up to teach, don't, and there are so many other reasons for never teaching for a full week - six days of class - one being the many festivals and religious holidays nearly all of which are observed. Other reasons include time taken off by female teachers for menstrual periods (cultural necessity), and for religious rites regarding family members such as deaths and marriages. So having a full complement of teachers at school for a whole week can be quite rare.Support to schools First Steps Himalaya is committed to quality education for all children. As our older children at the centres reach five years old and move to school, we have continued to support them by providing teacher training at the local schools in our project areas. With the help of the British School in Kathmandu, we have arranged for teachers to sit in on their classes to see how other schools run. This has been an eye opening experience for them and they have returned from these three day trips full of ideas and new enthusiasm. Seeing the children sitting quietly and doing their work as instructed was a novelty. In general Nepali schools are very noisey due to their construction, and the method of instruction, which makes learning difficult for some.We have had a series of volunteer teacher trainers working with local school teachers to disseminate child friendly teaching methods. Now older children can have fun whilst learning maths, science, and English. This has been popular with the staff and children. As more trainers arrive our reach into schools further out increases.

Carmen training teachers
Durga testing primary kids
English lesson
Pokhare school kids
School class
Babysitting siblings
Poor classroom
New school library

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Books in Schools

The establishment of libraries, initially at Sangachok and now the surrounding schools, with help from the Yusef Abubaker Memorial Trust and subsequently, Room to Read and Books Abroad has proved a huge hit with students and teachers alike.

Books from Room to Read are all published in Nepali, while the Books Abroad are all English titles. We recieved 8,000 books from Books Abroad which we disseminated within our support network. To have a library full of books has been quite something for some of the schools and has certainly helped widen the students perspectives on a number of different topics.

Community Health
Health in the CommunityFor a number of reasons we do Not provide professional health services, such as doctors, dentists and midwifery in our district. While we would like to, the cultural implications on the organisation of severe illness or death as a result of treatment by one of our staff or volunteers would have a hugely negative impact on the services we are already successfully providing. As well as, this there are some on-going programs in the district sponsored by large overseas government agencies.The traditional practice of inviting elders, wise women or priests to look after, and pray over, sick family members while declining, still occurs. Many of them have have no real understanding of the importance of cleanliness at a basic level such as having a clean knife or pair of scissors to cut the umbilical cord of new born babies. The carers are often unaware of the severity of diseases they are dealing with. As well as this, some villagers believe that going to hospital means that you are going to die. This belief stems from leaving the trip to the doctor for treatment so late that there is nothing that can be done for the patient, hence the death of the patient, which reinforces the notion that hospital and death are inevitable.What we do provide however is information and education around the benefits of good food and nutrition for growing children, teeth cleaning, hand washing and toilet cleanliness as well as the necessity of early intervention when accident, illness or disease occurs. One of the ways we disseminate knowledge is role playing by teachers, and teaching song and dance to the children about eating healthy food and not providing sweets. Parents sometimes return fro Kathmandu or in some cases from working overseas bringing many unhealthy sweets and treats for their children. The children sing the songs at home that their teachers have taught them and tell their parents about food that is good to eat.An endemic problem is giving newly weaned children rice with large amounts of salt and very sweet milk tea. The excessive amounts of salt and sugar in the diet of the very young causes problems, especially the salt causing kidney problems.We provide cooking classes for parents to show them alternate ways of cooking and using a wider variety of vegetables and fruit for their families. The majority of the families eat mainly what they can grow so do have a very limited diet. We have a vegetable garden at some of the centres so the children can learn about other vegetables that are good to eat. We really want to expand this, as well as the cooking classes which are only based in Sangachok at this point in time.A more localised problem within the Tamang community is giving alcohol to toddlers. This has occurred for a long time and causes ongoing problems into adulthood. Currently we have two ethnic Tamang centres where we are working on education for the parents on this issue.The lack of knowledge of other means of tending to children and family members plus the inabiltity to pay for modern doctors and medicine is a major issue. Added to this is the distance many people have to walk to a health post. As can be seen in the photos to the right, the health posts are very basic with almost no equipment and medicine and very little training available.We are using our community centres as a base for providing information around good health and cleanliness so that illness and disease is less likely to occur and families will seek treatment earlier.

Jalkheni

Health manager

Nursing Station

Nurse

Jalkheni Health Post

A verse to live by

Birthing kit

The health post at Jalkheni

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