NCEF has approved expanding its area of operation to Inaruwa in Sunsari with Mr. Surendra Bhattarai as the area coordinator. In our first year, we will support 10 students in Sunsari. Working together with a strong group of volunteers on the ground, we have plans to expand to reach a larger number of students in Sunsari in the following year.

Inaruwa is located in the eastern part of Nepal, close to cities such as Dharan and Biratnagar. Although Inaruwa is close to the East-West highway in Nepal, it is a semi-urban area where a large fraction of children (one estimate puts the number at 35%) above age 5 do not attend school because families cannot afford to send their kids to school. About 20% of the students complete 10th grade. Most people have small plots of land where they do subsistence farming or pull rickshaws and take part in other similar jobs. Recent floods in eastern Nepal have resulted in many people seeking shelter in Inaruwa causing the already desperate employment situation to get worse.

Our expansion into eastern Nepal was made possible due to several factors. Sunsari is an economically deserving area that is accessible by roads and has basic communication facility such as telephones and postal mail. Sunsari also has a strong volunteer team that has experience working on social causes due to the presence of many NGOs. We have a committed facilitator who travels between Kathmandu and Inaruwa. Finally, we have been able to dedicate Swadesh Bhattarai, one of our volunteers, to oversee and guide our work in Inaruwa. This committed team of volunteers has already started its work. They have filled out more than 180 pages of academic, biographical, and academic information about 30 students in Sunsari and have sent it to the selection committee for evaluation and selection. We would like to congratulate this volunteer team for a great start towards making education affordable to the disadvantaged children in Sunsari.

In an effort to increase NCEF’s visibility at a nation-wide level, particularly among the Nepali diasporas, NCEF will participate at the “Social Clause Platform – Sahayogi Haat haru” organized as a part of the ANA (Association of Nepalis in the Americas) Youth Forums. This youth forum is being organized by Nepal Ko Yuwa, a youth movement that comprises of Nepali youths interested in fostering initiatives to give back to communities in Nepal.

This ANA Youth Forum brings together organizations working towards social cause in Nepal. This forum serves as an opportune platform for NCEF to showcase its mission and vision of providing educational opportunity to underprivileged children in Nepal. The event will take place during the ANA convention on Friday, July 3rd, 2009, 1:00 p.m. – 2:30p.m. in San Francisco: http://ana-convention.org/