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We are actively looking for new volunteers to expand our work to more places in Nepal. We hope to identify such volunteers and areas under our "New Area Identification Program". If you are interested in working with us to help children in your area, please read the rest of this page to get an idea of what awaits us in our quest to help the children.

The Nepalese Children's Education Fund, through our partner NGO in Nepal, Campaign for Education (CE), provides financial assistance to families that are unable to send their children to school. School fees are directly paid to the school. Instead of money, stationeries, books, and uniform are provided to the children. We visit our children once a month to make sure they are making progress in school and to help in any way we can if they are encountering difficulties. Our goal is to make sure all of our children continue to pass their classes and complete 10+2 or the Intermediate level and go even further to realize their potential. So it is important that we have an active group of volunteers keeping in constant touch with the children and families in the area.

How does it work?

Our new area identification program seeks new area applications from interested volunteers to start an area. In 2006, we will approve at most five areas under the new area identification program. The approved proposed areas are designated as "areas under evaluation". The areas under evaluation will perform and be treated just like older areas that CE has been running for a number of years. The only difference will be a much smaller number of students in the areas under evaluation. At the end of the year, the areas under evaluation will be evaluated using metrics outlined in this document. Only the areas under evaluation that have performed well will be approved for expansion with a larger number of students in the coming academic year.

Questionnaire for new areas

Before we proceed, we would like to know more about you so that we can understand your background, interests and the resources you bring to the organization better. We would also like to know more about the area you propose for CE work. We get a lot of requests from many individuals from around the country to start work in their areas. Please provide complete information. If you send incomplete information, it is likely that your application for a new area will not be considered. Please send the filled out information to .

New Area Application for

After you submit the information

Once you submit the information, a team of people will take a look at your application and evaluate it. The team will make a recommendation on whether or not we should start an evaluation phase in your area if we have not used up the quota for exploratory areas for that year and if we determine that the following conditions are satisfied:

• Response is provided for each question on the form.
• The area has plenty of needy children.
• The area coordinator and the volunteer residing in the area have a long term interest in being involved in this endeavor and plan to run the program for a number of years.
• Regular communication between the organization and the area coordinator is possible.
• A strong recommendation from at least one member of the organization.

If your application is approved, your proposed area will be designated an "area under evaluation". Now we must ensure that your area performs well throughout the year and passes the evaluation at the end of the academic year so that your area becomes a full fledged area with a large number of students in the next academic year.

Welcome aboard

As an area coordinator of an area under evaluation, our primary goal for the first year is to expose you to all the mechanisms and processes of the organization and for the organization to get used to working with you. We hope you will get experience on what kind of volunteers are reliable, what will be the difficulties in application collection, communication, fund disbursement, and reporting so that you can plan better next year when we have a larger number of students.

Even though your area is designated an area under evaluation, we will work as if your new area is a full fledged area that is no longer under evaluation. This means your area will be treated fairly and in the same manner as the organization treats older areas. You are entitled to the same discretionary spending and training budget as other older areas.

As soon as you hear from us that your area is approved, you will need to do the following tasks as soon as possible:

1. Read the area coordinator's manual. Even though your area is under evaluation, you must follow all the procedures and mechanisms mentioned in the coordinators manual. The only difference is you will send all your questions, reports, and suggestions to [email protected]
2. Visit the application and selection page and read about how students are selected.
3. Download the application for scholarship and collect three applications. Make an arrangement to send them to the organization. If you decide to send applications by email, please send them to [email protected]. Our goal is to fund students who are either about to drop out of school or children who do not go to school because of financial reason. You must find students that match this description even though we are in the middle of the academic year.
4. Send us your bank account information if you have not already done so. If you do not have a bank account, you need to open one because we can not give you cash. All financial disbursement to the area coordinators are done through bank account.
5. The organization requires that you send monthly student visit and financial reports. You can find the format for these reports in the area coordinator's manual. Because there are vacations and festivals at certain times of the year, it is alright if you can not send reports on specific months. If you do not think you can send reports on certain months, you need to tell us immediately the months in which we should not expect student visit reports from you. We require at least 10 reports in a year. Financial reports must be filed every month. If you decide to send these reports by email, please send them to [email protected].

Our commitment

This is a partnership between you and us to provide help to the children from your area. As you complete the tasks listed above, we will take the following steps to move this partnership forward:

1. We will assign you a contact person at CE. If there are any questions about any aspect of the organization or your work, you should first get in touch with this person. This person will forward your question to the right person if it requires input or work from other parts/volunteers of the organization.
2. Once we receive the applications, we will select one student as the recipient of CE financial assistance. We will send you this name.

Next steps

1. Please prepare a budget to cover the costs for the selected student. You can find the format and example in the area coordinator's manual. Please make sure that you send budget for the whole year and mention how much money would be necessary on what months.
2. Communicate with the student, family, school and the volunteer you have recruited to visit the student. Make arrangement for enrolling the student.
3. We will deposit the money to your bank account.
4. Once the money is received, enroll the student. If the amount is allocated for stationeries, uniform, books, you can buy those items and hand them over to the student. Please do not provide any cash to the student or the family.

Our partnership gets stronger

Now that the student is selected and enrolled, we move to the next phase of our partnership in which we work together to make sure the student makes consistent progress in school. We also make ourselves available to provide any assistance related to education to the student and the family.

• Please start visiting the student. Fill out the visit form during the visit and write down any additional comments and information on the form. Send the visit forms to CE in the months you scheduled to visit the student and send the reports.
• Prepare financial report every month. Transmit this report to CE every month. Please include all transportation, communication, and all other expenses related to our work in the financial report. You must send financial report even if there is no expense for that month.
• Each month, after you send student visit and financial report, a team of volunteers will review the forms and provide you feedback on how to improve the reports and the field work. Please try to incorporate these suggestions in your field work and reporting as quickly as possible because we want to work at the highest level of excellence.
• Organize at least one recreational activity for the student during the year. Please follow the guidelines and procedure mentioned in the coordinator's manual.
• If you or the volunteer require any training to be able to do this work better, we can provide funds for that. Please follow the guidelines and procedure mentioned in the coordinator's manual.

How did we do?

In February, we will review and evaluate the work in your proposed area. The evaluation will be based on the following metrics:

1. Student visit frequency. We strive to visit the students once a month except during long holidays. We expect that you were able to visit the students according to the schedule that you sent to the organization when we started working in your area.
2. Report filing. Although student visit reports are usually sent shortly after visiting the students, we understand that sometimes it might take a little longer to send the reports even though our volunteer visited the student according to the schedule. We generally expect your student visit report to arrive at the organization within 15 days of visiting the students. Financial reports are required every month according to the schedule.
3. Promptness of communication. Ideally we would like you to receive our questions and suggestions immediately. We would also like to receive your suggestions, questions, and answers immediately. Because most of us are doing this as our side job in our free time, it will not be possible for us to always respond to each other within a day or two. We can not, on the other hand, afford to wait for a month to hear back from you especially if we have questions or suggestions on how to improve the field work or reporting. We expect that you acknowledge and respond to our emails and phone calls within a week as far as possible.
4. Overseeing costs in both time and fund. Even though the rest of the organization will do its best to assist you in your area, we would like you to be able to take care of the operation of your area on your own as much as possible. If your CE contact person ends up spending several hours a few times a month every month and a large sum of money (for phone calls, transportation, meetings) to make sure your area is working properly, that could be an indication that we might not be prepared to increase the scope of our work in your area. We expect you to be able to operate your area mostly independently. Thus you have great flexibility as well as responsibility to run things well.
5. Quality of applications. Your evaluation will also be based on the type of students you were able to identify for applications and how the applications were filled out. We will see if the students satisfy the selection criteria or not. We will make a note of work well done if the applications are complete and accurate.
6. Quality of reports. We expect the student visit reports and financial reports to follow the specified format on the coordinator's manual. We also expect the reports to be complete. Incomplete and incorrectly filled out forms might be an indication that the volunteer needs further instruction on how to conduct the visit and fill out the forms. After we provide our feedback, you will have an opportunity to change the reports so that there are no recurring problems with the reports.

Moving ahead

If we determine that you have performed satisfactorily on all six metrics mentioned above, we will drop the "under evaluation" designation from your area. We will select 5-10 students in the coming academic year. The organization will provide you with all the resources it has. Your motivation, time, and energy will determine how big, how fast, and how far we go.

If we determine that the work in the proposed area did not meet the expectations under each metric, we will conclude the evaluation process. You will not be eligible to continue working with CE until next year.

NCEF is a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization.
US Taxpayer ID: 51-0424140
© Copyright Nepalese Children's Education Fund 2004.