2012 Goals

The Mountain Fund2012 Goals

Educate the childrenOn the banks of the heavily polluted Bagmati river there is a slum, with tin shanty "homes' having no toilets, floors, heat or lights. Everyday, 140 children walk from this slum to Koseli School where they bathe, brush teeth, change into clean school uniforms, have a hearty breakfast and begin to study. It's a place of miracles, there's no other way to state it. It costs just over $1.00 a day to feed, educate and provide clothing for these kids, an incredibly cheap cost. We had to turn away 60 children this year as there wasn’t room for them. Our goal is to start a second school and give those 60 children a chance at life.

A home for womenDomestic abuse in Nepal is rampant. The leading cause of death among women of childbearing age is suicide. Widows are tossed out and branded as witches. Victims of the sex trade are shunned by families. These women have no where to go. They are skilled farmers, they can support themselves and feed their children if they have a little land. Our farm cooperative will provide them with shelter and place to grow food. That's the essential needs, without which they will stay trapped in abuse. Our farm will be self-sustaining after one year.

Safety of young girlsAt Orchid Garden Nepal, young girls come to school everyday but are facing sexual abuse in the home. In some cases the parents are working until late evening and the abuse is at the hands of neighborhood boys, in the most extreme cases, it is a family member. We noticed grades falling off considerably when this began and have now moved some of these girls to a hostel where they can be safe. We need support to continue to provide a safe place for these young girls to live. The girls housed in the dormitory will range from age eight to eighteen and are all students from The Orchid Garden Nepal. Giving the girls a safe place to go after school where they are cared for in the afternoon and evening will not only keep them physically safe but will also encourage them to learn and will break the cycle of poverty and invest in the bright future of the girls and women of Nepal.

The end of Paper OrphansEvery year hundreds of Nepali children are turned into "paper orphans" just because their parents cannot care for them and work at the same time. One of the only affordable day-care centers in Kathmandu, the Orchid Garden, has the solution to this problem. A safe, affordable place for children to stay and learn while poor parents work to just get that day's meal. Perhaps as many as 60% of Nepal's "orphans" are economic orphans and should not be in institutions, but in day care. (source UNICEF) Orchid Garden Nepal provides low cost and safe daycare for children under five years old as well as a newly added classroom for grade one. At our growing facility, children get a healthy meal, room to play and plenty of tender, love & care. There are 104 children at OGN every day. We need more options like this to end the paper orphan business.

Access to healthcareFor near ly a decade we've been supporting small health clinics in rural Nepal. These clinics make basic health services accessible to thousands of rural villagers near the border with Tibet. It costs an amazing $1.00 per person, per YEAR to hire medical staff and provide basic services. There are no health clinics in many rural villages in Nepal. It is often a full day walk, or more, over rough trails to reach the nearest government health post and often those health posts have no staff or no medicine. Thousands suffer needlessly and are denied the most basic health services including skilled child delivery assistance. Hundreds of women die during unattended child birth and hundreds of children die for lack of the most basic health services.

Safe MotherhoodOn average, one woman dies from the complications related to childbirth every four hours. (source UNICEF) Rural Nepal faces an acute shortage of maternity services. The result is one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. It's a loss of life that is preventable. Lack of trained staff and facilities for delivery are two of the leading causes of the high maternal mortality rates. That's fixable, with very little money. We have a birthing center open and running in the village of Thambuchet in the Rasuwa District. The government built the center and we supplied equipment and staff. There is excess capacity (unused space) in many of the government health posts in rural villages that can be utilized as birthing centers giving thousands of women access to safe birthing assistance.

Access for NGO’s to Global GivingThere are over 30,000 registered NGO's in Nepal. Few have staff capable of posting projects on GlobalGiving as they don't speak English, or speak it quite poorly. We aim to change that and in so doing change the game for Nepali NGO's. A lot of good NGO's simply cannot tell their story to the western donor community because they don't know the English language. They can't use GlobalGiving, can't write grants, can't create English language web sites or blogs. They are totally cut off from western donor markets. I do not work for Global Giving, but I know it works and it works well, IF, and only IF you have good enough English to tell your story.

Education and assistance to the most marginalized groups. The Chepang people live in the hills above Chitwan. Denied citizenship in Nepal for decades they eke out a living as part-time farmers and part-time hunter gatherers, barely able to feed themselves. In 2011 we sponsored a teacher at the school in one of their villages. We aim to expand our involvement and support to this marginalized group in 2012 by conducting medical camps in the villages and expanding our support for education there.

At Mountain Fund we do what works. We believe in a hand up, not a hand out.

The projects we’ve chosen to support work and produce results at a very low cost. These projects are not intended to provide perpetual aid, nor will we portray the poor and hopeless and helpless. At The Mountain Fund we back winners and support success. Underlying all of our work is the belief that truly sustainable success means that people should get a hand up out of poverty, but not a hand out. A hand up solves problems and makes life better, a hand out perpetuates poverty. That’s why we’ve chosen to support projects like Orchid Garden Nepal, for example. Rather than perpetuate the practice of creating paper orphans and separating children from their families, Orchid Garden provides an affordable option that enables poor families to work, to keep their children at home and to know the children are receiving good care and a good education. Institutions can provide food and shelter but not a family. Please watch this video to understand better the magnitude of the “paper orphan” issue in Nepal.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/101east/2011/09/2011920125119853524.html

Koseili School is another example of doing what works. The children there live in conditions that we in the west wouldn’t allow our pets to live in. Yet everyday life for them transforms when the enter the gates of the school. We know that these kids are not going to live out their lives in the slums and neither will their children or grandchildren. Please watch this short video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKlZOBAIZdE

Our new Women’s Cooperative Farm is a program we are very excited about. Women who are barren, windows, victims of the sex-slave trade or find themselves alone for any other reason are the most vulnerable of Nepal’s society. We’ve examined this problem for years now and visited many programs that are working with women in these situations. While we’ve seen programs that are committed to the welfare of women and met some inspirational leaders of this programs, they aren’t sustainable. Teaching women to sew, weave or make handicrafts doesn’t create the potential for income that’s needed for them to support their children. These programs require a constant stream of donations to survive. Our farming cooperative does not. The women of Nepal are farmers, with 90% of them already engaged in agricultural work what they need is a plot of land where they can work and they will feed themselves and their children. It’s sustainable and can be taken to scale, meaning there is no reason to create just one such farm and every reason to replicate this project over and over again.

Our new alliance with Global Giving will start in 2012. There are 30,000 registered NGO’s in Nepal, but few have access to web donations portals like Global Giving. The most effective assistance in Nepal needs to come from home-grown NGO’s who are close the problems and can operate cheaply to solve them. Our training center in Kathmandu for NGO’s will empower them to tap the power of the web. That will put the funds close to the beneficiaries and the local NGO’s will be held accountable by those beneficiaries. This will make aid more responsive and more responsible. That’s doing what works.

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“Helping others should not make others feel helpless.”

-Scott Maclennan

Executive Director

About usFounded in 2005, the Mountain Fund aims to create healthy, vibrant mountain communities where people have access to healthcare, education and economic opportunity in an environment where human rights are valued and respected. To achieve this goal, we sponsor community-based initiatives that prioritize respect for the local culture and the environment.

Our approachIn mountain communities the suffering c a u s e d b y p o v e r t y c a n b e overwhelming as the needs for basic amenities far outstrip the local r e s o u r c e s . O u r a p p r o a c h t o sustainable development is to first identify needs that can be fulfilled today, with very little funding and by local protagonists committed to the advancement of their communities. The Mountain Fund then works hand-in-hand with community leaders to develop and implement effective solutions to outstanding problems in their villages.

The issues