Stichting Veldwerk at Nepal

Secretariaat: Stichting Veldwerk Postbus 163 1850 AD Heiloo The Netherlands

Tel:+31 (0)72-5339585 veldwerk@wlink.com.np IBAN nr. NL51ABNA0543703266 Attn. Stichting Veldwerk, p/a Egmond binnen Bank: ABN-Amro 543703266

Sion is working at Hamro Ghar, a rehabilitation centre for displaced carpet children, read his story!

Hello, my name is Sion llyr Dafis and I'm from Wales.

I came here to visit the country and didn't have any plans in the direction of volunteer work. By coincidence I met René, the founder of Stichting Veldwerk. After we talked for an evening about Nepal and the work he was doing here he asked me if I didn't wanted to work in one of his projects. I decided to give it a try and he arranged a working place for me on Hamro Ghar. This school lies outside the ring road.


There are about 50 children on the school, they also eat and sleep there. Most of the children are picked out of the carpet factories where it's, unfortunately, not unusual to rely on child labour. This means they didn't get any kind of education before they arrived on the school and have a troubled background. Hamro Ghar works together with Rugmarkfoundation. This organisation goes into the factories to see if there are any children working there, and if so, tries to get these children out of the factory and into the school.
If you walk into the school you couldn't tell that these children carry a lot of emotional luggage, they're happy and really feeling at home at Hamro Ghar, which means our home. I also found it very pleasant to find out that contact between the teachers and the students is very friendly, you almost never hear a teacher raising his or her voice against one of the students and instead of 'sir' and 'miss' the children approach you by calling you brother or sister.


I teach the children from Sunday till Thursday. In Nepal it is common to have a holiday on Saturday instead of Sunday. In the morning I'm teaching two of the classes English or maths, after the tea break I teach two more classes and spend the last two hours on school playing with them. The children in the class have very different levels, which makes it very difficult to have a very strict organised lesson. At the same time is this what I like about my work here. It demands a lot of flexibility and creativity to make sure the lesson has been useful for all of the children from the class, you teach a lot individual were possible, and is I wanted a very strict organised lesson I might as well stayed home where I'm a qualified biology teacher.
The atmosphere between the teachers is very friendly on my school; you can tell that most of them are not only colleagues but also friends. All this makes the state in which the school is, like the small space and the tin roof that works like an oven in the summer, more then bearable. The school is logically very active if it comes to criticizing child labour, the teachers also try to make the children aware of that.


Yesterday, 12th of June, it was International child labour day. Our children made big signs with messages like 'say no to child labour in Nepal' and walked around in Kathmandu.
Before I leave the school to return on my bicycle to Thamel, I always select two children who are allowed to make a round on my steel horse, it has cost me several bills at the bicycle repairman so far but the joy the children get out of that is priceless. When I write this I've been working on the school for already two months and still have one month to go.
I hope I managed to give you a bit of an impression of the work that I'm doing at the school that I'm working in, greetings,

Sion