NCEF officers are busy writing annual reports looking back at 2008 and their visions for 2009 and beyond in their respective committees. The reports will serve as a tool for all of us to work together in improving our work with the main goal of helping change the lives of the most needy children in Nepal.

In this newsletter, NCEF CEO Mr. Omprakash Gnawali highlights some of the administrative work from 2008.

- Omprakash Gnawali, NCEF Chief Executive Officer

While we move forward with our plans for 2009, let us take a moment to review some of the activities we were involved in during 2008. Our experiences in 2008 have helped inform our continuing policy discussions within the organization. I hope to provide a brief sample of these discussions.

NCEF supported a total of 57 students during the 2008/2009 academic year, an increase of four percent compared to that of the previous year. Our annual budget for the 2008/2009 academic year was NRs. 607,500 (US$ 8500), an 18% increase over the previous academic year.

To streamline the coordination and communication within our teams in five different areas of Nepal, we created the position of "Program Director.” After extensive interviews with three highly qualified candidates, we appointed Mr. Hari Tripathi as our first Program Director in August 2008. The Program Director is a volunteer position with no monetary compensation. The positive impact of this position is already seen in all parts of the organization, as we now have more up-to-date information about fieldwork in all five areas. The area coordinators have also experienced faster response times when they needed assistance or clarification when unexpected scenarios arose in the field.

I reported in my last annual report that we had created the position of "Student Selection Officer."  It is my pleasure to report to you that this position has proven to be the best way to manage all activities related to the selection of students for financial assistance. Having a single person responsible for the overall execution and coordination of this important task was absolutely instrumental in making student selection in 2008 the most efficient in NCEF's history.

I had also mentioned in my last report that due to the increasing number of students, volunteers, and donors, we needed a better way to keep track of all information that exists in the organization.  After experimenting with two different products in the last two years, we have finally settled on a system to securely keep donor information. Throughout the year, we looked for various systems to keep track of student information. In the upcoming student selection cycle, we are planning to use a wiki-based system, which I believe is versatile enough to use for our purposes and accessible to everyone in the organization.

It is not the novelty of the project, but the commitment to the long-term impact in the lives of our students that sustains the interest and dedication of our volunteers all over Nepal. Our area coordinators and volunteers in each area continue to visit students to make sure we are doing everything to assist in their education, and they also help the organization identify and evaluate the applicants for financial assistance. Our Kathmandu area-coordinator has learned how to use a computer, and routinely sends information and regular reports by emails. In Patan, after a good experience during the brief evaluation period, we signed a one-year Memorandum of Understanding with Kehi Garoun, an NGO in Nepal. They provide one of their staff members to conduct fieldwork at no cost to us. In Kavre, emails, as well as postal mail has been effective in maintaining regular communication. In Nepalgunj, most communication is done by email, and the volunteers there always cheerfully manage the large number of students. Although student application transmission and budget disbursements have taken place, information from Palpa remains sparse. We plan to work with our volunteers in Palpa to improve communication and reporting.

We had another disappointing year with respect to our efforts to promote provisional areas to full areas. To identify a new area, our strategy is to recruit provisional areas and do a small-scale financial assistance project (often with 1-2 students) to evaluate if the volunteers are resourceful enough to administer our program in the area. Despite approving several provisional areas and conducting such pilot projects, we were not able to promote provisional areas to full areas in 2008. We plan to evaluate the 2008/2009 batch of provisional areas for their suitability to become new areas before the beginning of the 2009/2010 academic year. We need to continuously reassess how we run these pilot programs, and improve it so that the process is welcoming and remains exciting to new volunteers.

We were fortunate to have Atul, Hem, and Jay, who are US-based volunteers, meet and interact with the students, families, and Nepal-based volunteers during their visits to Nepal. This year such US-Nepal volunteer interactions took place in Kathmandu, Patan, Kavre, and Nepalgunj. We hope to have a US-based volunteer visit Palpa this year. We believe such interaction between volunteers who are involved in different aspects of the organization, often thousands of miles apart, fosters committed collaboration within the team.

At this time, I would also like to give our supporters and well-wishers a quick tour of some of the policy discussions that took place in 2008 and are continuing into 2009. Two of the most important deliberations are related to student visits and budgets.

NCEF asks volunteers to visit each student approximately ten times a year to keep in touch with the students and families and assist them when problems arise.  In some areas, this has placed an enormous burden on our volunteers, preventing them from reaching out to more students. We are evaluating a proposal that suggests that it is sufficient to visit the students six times a year. Any change in student visit frequency will be effective for the upcoming academic year, which starts in mid-April 2009.

Gathering in Nepalgunj

Each student selected by NCEF as a recipient of financial assistance receives a maximum of NRs. 7500 per year towards educational expenses. Due to close to double digit inflation in the last three years, students can no longer afford to attend the same schools they did just a few years ago with NCEF financial assistance. We are surveying school fees in various cities in Nepal to set the new maximum assistance amount. We might also setup a mechanism to revise this amount every two years. Additionally, we sometimes receive requests from the parents to pool whatever they can afford and our assistance so that their child can go to a better school. This sometimes raises difficult situation when the parents cannot pay their promised share. We intend to have a clear student budget policy and a revised award amount for the upcoming academic year.

We just concluded a year in Nepal, during which we did not know if we could continue our work with the same effectiveness as we had done in the past. There were severe disruptions with respect to transportation and communication at various times during the year due to political campaigning and demonstrations followed by the elections to the Constituent Assembly. As in the previous years, there were floods and crippling power cuts - up to 16 hours a day even in places like Kathmandu. We are fortunate to have a very determined group of volunteers who continued to meet and assist the students with their education despite these challenges. Our volunteers in the US used their time in the evenings and weekends to provide logistical support without which this program would not have been possible. Our supporters continued to trust us with their charitable giving throughout the year so that we can fund our programs. Most importantly, the students tried to make the best of the opportunity they now have to further their education. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate every member of our NCEF family on their outstanding effort.

In ending this annual report, I assure you that we have kept our work true to the stated goals of the organization, and every effort has been made to ensure that the execution of the projects are transparent. I invite you to send your thoughts on how you would like to see NCEF evolve in the years ahead. I also ask for your continued support for our students in 2009. On behalf of our volunteers and students, I wish you a wonderful year ahead.

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- Jay Shrestha, NCEF Volunteer

I had a wonderful opportunity to meet with NCEF students and volunteers from Patan and Kathmandu on December 20,2008.  Fourteen students and nine volunteers attended the gathering at Jawlakhel Zoo in Patan. We used a picnic area within the zoo premises to have a light lunch. We provided the students with drawing paper and a wide selection of colored pencils and crayons, and in teams of two, the children created beautiful drawings. We then proceeded to explore the zoo. The children were particularly excited to see the tigers and the hippopotamus! We had to count the children several times during the afternoon to make sure none had strayed from our group.

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It was great to interact with the students, and learn more about their lives while also observing their individual personalities. After we finished seeing the animals the children wanted to ride the merry-go-round at the zoo. After finishing the ride, we divided up the students so that the volunteers could take them back to their respective homes. I accompanied my own group of students on a taxi and dropped each one off at their respective homes. I returned home with a stack of the students' drawings and fond memories of the gathering.

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