It is my great pleasure to write NCEF’s annual report for 2009. We have made some exciting progress, and am pleased to share them with you. I will also briefly describe some challenges and new initiatives
we are planning for 2010. I invite you to read this report and work with us to provide the gift of education to the disadvantaged children in Nepal. Please note that greater details on the information found in this report can be found on our website.
In 2009, NCEF provided financial assistance to 66 students, an increase of 15% over 2008. Our 2009 budget was NRs. 675,000 (US$9000), an increase of 11% over 2008. 50 volunteers in the US and 20
volunteers in Nepal raised funds, provided planning and logistical support, offered legal and administrative assistance, and conducted field visits in Nepal. Volunteers worked tirelessly to ensure that each student has the best chance to succeed in school. Note that NCEF’s work is supported entirely by volunteers; there is no salary or monetary compensation of any kind. Everything that we do is possible only because of our donors and volunteers. Thank you.
Program Director
In last year’s report, I was optimistic about the impact of the Program Director position we had created in Nepal. For the last year and a half, Mr. Hari Tripathi has served as the Program Director in Nepal, and I can report that this position has been a huge success. Mr. Tripathi has not only supported our volunteers’ work throughout the country, but has also coordinated many visits of our US-based volunteers to Nepal so that they could meet our Nepal-based volunteers and the students.
New Area Mentoring
The new area mentoring process has also become much stronger. In 2009, we had several provisional areas. After evaluating their performance at the end of the 2008/2009 academic year, we graduated Dolakha into a regular area. In 2009, we mentored five new areas with 2-3 students in each area, and a number of these areas may be ready for a larger number of students in 2010. The new area mentoring process ensures that if a provisional area performs well, according to our guidelines, it becomes a regular area. During the provisional period, the volunteers become familiar with the procedures and policies of the organization through guided hands-on experience. Our experience working with new areas tells us that the new area mentoring program in place works well. It allows us to expand
our work, but in a deliberate fashion that ensures the provisional area becomes a well-run sustainable area.
Student Selection
The collection of financial assistance applications and student selection required monumental efforts from all the volunteers. Areas sent applications by email or postal mail. One area coordinator had to scan and email a total of 228 pages of information to the selection committee for students from his area. Three volunteers in Kathmandu helped with the dispatching and coordination of application collection. A total of six volunteers served in the selection committee to evaluate the applications and
select the recipients of NCEF’s support. An additional eight volunteers helped translate the applications. Student selection is a key part of our efforts, and one of our largest projects during the year. We rely on a large number of volunteers to identify the neediest students, who can truly benefit from our financial assistance.
Publicity and Fundraising
We mainly focus on individual donations. We wrote one grant proposal this year. Although the proposal did not get funded, it was a learning experience for our volunteers and an opportunity to capture all aspects of the organization in a single document. NCEF plans to use this snapshot of the organization to help write future grant proposals. Much of our publicity is done online – through our website, newsletters, Facebook group and Twitter feeds. One of our San Francisco-based volunteers attended an annual gathering of the Nepalese diaspora in the US to present our work.
Evaluations
It is our tradition to continuously evaluate our work and policies and adjust them to make us more effective in meeting our goal to provide deserving children, who would otherwise not go to school, with the opportunity to receive an education. As a result of these evaluations, we made two main changes to our policies in 2009. First, we changed the student visit frequency to once every two months. Previously, the volunteers visited each student ten times a year to keep an updated record of the students’ progress in school and to offer any guidance and help to ensure continued school attendance and performance. The new reporting schedules are centrally planned so that the reports from different areas are spread out evenly across the months. The staggered schedules also allow timely processing and follow-ups. Second, we changed the maximum financial assistance to NRs. 10,000 per student for post-SLC students (grades 11-12). For rest of the students (up to grade 10), the maximum assistance remains at
NRs. 7,500. When we conducted a survey of school fees in various parts of Nepal, we found that NRs. 10,000 would be required for some majors for post-SLC students for school fees, books, and supplies.
Connecting Volunteers
One of the concerns for an organization like NCEF, which primarily communicates electronically, is the lack of face-time between volunteers. Volunteers not being able to meet in person can become an impediment to effective and efficient teamwork. Our experience suggests that this is a challenge that can be overcome.
A proposal we wrote in late 2009, which was led by a volunteer in Seattle, had active participation from volunteers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Rhode Island. The student selection committee, a group that evaluates the applications, and determines which students should receive the financial assistance, had members from across the US and also from Nepal. We make effort to meet each other in person whenever possible. Typically, the volunteers make time to meet other volunteers when they are visiting places during their personal or business trips. I personally met 10 volunteers in 2009.
Finally, we hold a executive, general, or board teleconference meetings approximately once every two months. These meetings provided additional means to interact, discuss, and plan our work. Thus, despite the distance and time zones, we made effective use of all means of communication at our disposal to keep our volunteers in close contact, and involve them in planning and execution of our work. NCEF has grown to be an organization that can work effectively despite its distributed nature.
Setbacks
The year 2009 was not without some setbacks for us. The biggest one was our inability to continue our work in Palpa. When the area coordinator in Palpa became unavailable to support our work, volunteers in the US and Nepal tried to identify potential area coordinator to take over our work in Palpa. Area coordinators live locally in the area and together with the volunteers, visit and work with the students and families there. After considering three applicants for the area coordinator position in Palpa, and doing preliminary assessment of their effectiveness in establishing our presence in Palpa, we decided to stop our work in Palpa. Although there is a need for financial assistance program in Palpa, we need
volunteers who share our vision and attitude to deliver the financial assistance, and demonstrate the capability to run the project. When these conditions are not met, we have no choice but to stop our work in the area. This was however, a learning experience for us. We have intensified our effort to train and develop our volunteer base that shares our vision and attitude, so that we have a team of individuals that are ready to function as the area coordinator when the need arises.
Challenges
One of the biggest challenge that we face as an organization is information management. Last year, we embarked on a project to organize all the information we work with – information regarding our students, volunteers, donors, and operational information about our projects. I want to report that we have made significant headway in organizing and standardizing our financial and donor information. The next phase is with respect to organizing student and operational information. The challenge is lack of standard software and tools to manage this information. We would need to customize available software and tools to meet our needs.
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Another challenge is standardizing fieldwork and reporting procedures in Nepal across the areas. At the end of 2009, we had nine different areas (provisional and regular areas) at different parts of the
country. Some areas had been in operation since the founding of the organization while others for only a few months. We plan to gather all the volunteers in one place and conduct a training program in 2010.
Such a gathering will not only enable us to standardize the instruction to all the areas but also provide a forum in which volunteers from different areas can learn from each other’s experience.
We plan to standardize the processing of regular reports from the areas in which we work. With a projected 70+ students in 2010, we need to process 35 student visit reports every month. In addition, there are financial reports from each area arriving every other month. If the reports are in Nepali, we also translate them to English. Each report needs to be examined to plan any intervention or extra help for the students. We already have a small team of volunteers reading and processing the reports. This year, we plan to recruit more volunteers for this task and train them to help process, interpret, and plan
actions based on these reports.
Every couple months, we organize a teleconference to review how we have done and to plan our activities for the following few months. During these meetings, we have spirited discussions about our
policies, work, scope, purpose, and priorities. Although different topics are covered in different meetings depending on what is pressing at the moment, and different volunteers call in depending on who is available and working on a project at the time, one thing remains thesame during these meetings – the energy and the commitment to support the education of our students with the help from our donors. It is this energy and dedication that will enable NCEF to maintain the highest standard in transparency and integrity while we work with you to secure a better future for the children of Nepal in 2010 and beyond.
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