Phulbari School groundbreaking ceremony

On 10^th July 2011 or 26 Assad 2068 in the Nepali calendar (confusing I know) we went to the small hillside village of Phulbari to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for a new school building CDRA is helping to build. The new building is being built with assistance from CDRA and Mr. Jim Danisch, an American who has settled in the area and started an organic farm and teaching centre. We will have to do a blog soon on the good work Jim is doing.

We have been to Phulbari several times before and have always enjoyed the wonderful hospitality and beautiful scenery. Last time we were fortunate enough to help deliver some uniforms that were kindly donated by the Goodwill Community Foundation from the USA.

The first thing we noticed as we got out of the ute for the ceremony was that the children had formed a clapping guard of honor and were looking very smart in their new uniforms. There were also several Buddhist monks from the nearby monastery in Namobuddha conducting a blessing of the area. We were honored to receive a beautiful garland of flowers and a paper rosette each. The speeches were in Nepali and although we are learning slowly we were not able to follow fluently. There was some traditional dancing from some of the village girls followed by a ceremony where sacred items were blessed by the monks and placed at the base of the foundation holes so the school will be built on top of these blessings. We also received beautiful white silk scarves from the monks.

Ashok presented an award to Maita Singh Tamang, the village headman who has been the driving force behind getting projects into his village. This award was to recognize the benefits that he has bought to his small community.  

After many photos were taken we were offered a delicious meal of local produce by the village elders in the old school building. This old 4 room building is the primary source of education for over 200 children and has no water or electricity. The rooms are barely 5m by 5m. The new building will cost around NZ$15000 it will utilize local labour from the villagers who will volunteer their time. Right now around NZ$5000 has been raised leaving a shortfall of $10000 before the project can be completed. The reason construction starts before fundraising is completed is that it can take many years to fundraise this amount of money and the children need the new building ASAP. The children can use parts of the building as they are completed, even if the entire building isn't completed for several years. Mind you if you have a spare 10 grand lying around we sure could use it…   

The view from the new building site showing the old school building in the background





The local girls dancing