Thanks to your generous contribution and support, NCEF has approved Birgunj and Sunsari as a new area. Birgunj and Sunsari are designated as "areas under evaluation" as outlined in our New Area Identification Program. The continuation of the new area will be based on metrics such as achieved student visit frequency, report filing, promptness of communication, costs, and quality of applications and reports.
In addition, NCEF approved Dolakha as a full area. The decision was made after careful evaluation of student visit frequency, reporting, promtness of communication and quality of applications. Dolakha, with population of 1,75,389(CBS, 2001) is a beautiful hilly district which lies in the Janakpur zone of central development region of Nepal. Our area coordinator, Mr. Tenzing Lama, is a teacher and social worker by profession and visits his area every few weeks. He even organized a function to call several important members of the society to distribute NCEF scholarships to the students. NCEF will support a total of 5 students in Dolakha this year with a possibility of sponsoring one or two post-SLC students.
Leave a Comment
|
Are you in yet? Join our cause to receive announcements, view new pictures and videos. Invite your Friends!
Number of Members: 4,241
Donations from Cause: $695 |
One of the important volunteer tasks in NCEF is to visit students. Every month, dedicated NCEF volunteers in Nepal donate their free time to visit NCEF-sponsored students in their homes and schools. The volunteers talk to the students, their teachers and their parents or guardians. They find out how the students are doing in school, and assess whether they need any help (e.g., new school books or increased parental encouragement for their studies). The volunteers also learn from these visits and suggest ways to improve NCEF. They submit short reports on the status of each student after every visit. This is part of NCEF’s commitment to accountability and responsibility.
As we look back on 2008, we can see varying levels of visits by NCEF volunteers in Nepal to sponsored students. Looking forward, we see opportunities for further improvement and challenges in implementing student visits. A special thanks go to all of the NCEF volunteers who spent their time visiting students in Kathmandu, Kavre, Nepalgunj, Patan and Palpa in 2008. We also thank those volunteers outside these areas who helped translate these reports and enter them into our database.
Volunteers visited 55 NCEF-sponsored students in 2008, a slight increase in students from 2007. Over 280 volunteer visits to students took place in 2008, a decrease of about one-fifth compared to 2007 (please see Figure 1 for 2008 visit information). Students in all 5 areas in which NCEF operates were visited, and all students were visited at least once.
Figure 1: Student Visits by Area
Student visits and reports are very important in several respects: (1) they support sponsored students and ensure their needs are being met; and (2) they provide critical information to NCEF officers, which allows NCEF to make effective use of the generous contributions by donors. Given the value of student visits, NCEF aims to visit all of its sponsored students each month. As Figure 1 shows, NCEF has not yet achieved this goal. NCEF continues to strive to improve its performance. However, the good news is that we are making progress; more students are being visited by NCEF than ever before. The percentage of expected visits conducted per month varied throughout the year (please see Figure 2). This provides a base upon which to improve.
Figure 2: % Student Visits by Month
NCEF officers also try to understand student visit performance by area, and to work with area coordinators to increase student visits. Volunteers in Nepalgunj, Kathmandu and Kavre conducted over 60% of expected visits. In Patan that number was only 24%. In Palpa, students were visited only a couple of months for an unacceptable 14% of expected visits (please see Figure 3). None of these levels reached the levels for which the organization was aiming.
Figure 3: % of Student Visits to Plan by Area
NCEF and its volunteers are committed to visiting 100% of students as planned. However, it is very important that we recognize some of the challenges with this goal, which may be unfamiliar to members who live outside of Nepal. Volunteers sometimes have to spend considerable time traveling (walking and/or taking public buses) to meet with students. As an all-volunteer organization, volunteers are not paid for the time they spend doing visits. Weather, such as flooding, can make such journeys difficult, longer or even impossible. School and national holidays may mean that volunteers or students travel to other areas for family reasons, making mutual contact hard to arrange during those periods. Unfortunately, some students disappear entirely, often to go work locally or in India to support their families.
NCEF continues to work with its volunteers to improve the level of reporting. Nepali to English translators allow volunteers not fluent in English to provide reports in Nepali. The translations allow the information to be understood by officers and members who do not speak Nepali. Also, to help Nepal volunteers with student visits, reporting and other functions, NCEF continues to offer a small training fund where area coordinators and volunteers in a particular area may spend up to 4% of that area’s funds for students’ expenses. Typical classes taken by volunteers under this program offer training to develop English and computer skills. This will benefit both the volunteer and NCEF.
In late 2007, the NCEF Executive Committee took action to help improve reporting levels in Patan as its performance level, as seen above, was well below that of all other areas. As reported last year, NCEF engaged with a Nepali non-profit organization Kehi Garoun (KG) to coordinate volunteer work in Patan. While reporting percentage increased from 17% to 24%, the results were not as significant as expected. We will continue to work with KG to improve in this area.
In addition, NCEF has taken additional steps to address Nepal communication issues by bringing on board a new volunteer, Hari, in Kathmandu. One of his responsibilities is enhanced communications with these areas, and working with them to provide reports in a timely manner. Furthermore, we are currently considering reducing reporting requirements to once every two months, instead of every month. Having received feedback from volunteers in Nepal about the extensive efforts required to conduct visits and having also benchmarked NCEF reporting frequency against other organizations, the NCEF Executive Committee is giving this proposal serious consideration.
NCEF looks forward to building on this year’s student visits and taking steps to arrange even more student visits in 2009.
Leave a Comment
|
