Placements
Placements
Live Nepal specializes in tailor-making placements to suit your skills and desires. Our team has a wide network of associates and institutions and so we can offer placements in a diverse number of areas and with different focuses. Whether you want a clear, straight forward routine, or whether you have some specific skills, innovative ideas or objectives to meet, we have the connections and flexibility to arrange a placement that suits your needs.
These are some existing typical volunteer areas. The list is not meant to be exhaustive but suggestive, so if you have something different in mind please contact us and we can discuss how we can manage a placement to suit you.
Schools - Children's homes / Orphanages - Environmental/Community work - Healthcare
Schools
Volunteering in a school is an excellent way to help Nepal. Whether or not you have any direct teaching experience, English Medium Schools are crying out for native English speakers to help raise their standard of English tuition and subjects taught in English. Either by teaching classes yourself, or supporting Nepali teachers with their classes, your mastery of the English language will be invaluable to the students. It is possible to teach a variety of age groups from Nursery to grade 9 (3-16/17 yrs). Furthermore, there are countless opportunities to help in other ways; starting clubs, helping the school write promotional materials, organizing events- whatever ideas you have will be welcomed. Schools and students in Nepal are always very excited to have foreign volunteers and will be eager to interact and learn as much as they can.
General routine/role/duties:
- Teaching/assisting up to 3-5 lessons a day (45 mins each), or otherwise helping during school hours.
- Most Nepali schools operate for 6 days per week, with one day off on Saturday
Creating and running any other projects that you would like eg after school clubs
Locations:
We have contact with a number of schools looking for volunteers within the Kathmandu valley. We also can offer placements in schools in more rural locations, such as Dang in western Nepal.
Another very common way to volunteer in Nepal is as an assistant/career in Children’s homes. The homes vary in size from 20 to 70 children, between the ages of 3-18yrs. It is possible to combine looking after the children in the homes with supporting them during the day at their schools. This can be a good idea because volunteers frequently find they have nothing to do during the day whilst the children are at school. However, if volunteers are prepared to get up early, they can assist with the general chores of cooking/cleaning etc in the morning, have the day time off, and then help the children in the evening with homework/play/care/cooking etc. As always, innovative programs and activities are very welcome.
General routine/role/duties:
- Either working 5:30-9:30am with chores/cooking/getting the children ready for school etc, and working in the evening 4:00-9:30pm providing activities/assistance with homework/care etc Or Getting up with the children for school, supporting them for a few hours in school (having either the morning or afternoon off), and then providing activities/support for the children in the evening.
- School holidays mean extra support is needed from volunteers, so Saturdays and other days off school are special times when volunteers can run activities, plan trips etc. If necessary, additional time off for volunteers can be arranged to compensate for this.
Locations:
Kathmandu valley and Dang valley about 10 hours drive west from Kathmandu.
Environmental Work with Students/Local Communities
A relatively new area of volunteering which would be a solid contribution to Nepal is helping to raise awareness about environmental issues and start small local projects implementing improvements. As a developing country, Nepal suffers from issues of pollution and lack of tidiness and recycling. Small local projects could empower people to change this in their own communities. For example, this could involve working with a group of school students or volunteers from a community, educating and discussing ways to clean up the local area of litter, start planting and ‘greenery’ campaigns, find out existing networks for recycling and help implement these, eg of plastics, cardboard and glass. Specifically, it would be good if volunteers could deliver packages that get such clean up systems going, but put in place measures and duties among volunteers so that they are able to carry on after you have left.
General routine/role/duties:
- Work roughly 6/7 hours daily at convenient times suiting the specific placement. This includes time for planning/preparing and information gathering.
- Educate/inspire school children and local volunteers about environmental issues on both the global and local level.
- Create packages to deal with local problems eg sponsoring dustbins and recycle bins and raising awareness in local communities about these. Consider and implement other solutions to pollution at the local/community level.
- Inspire children to create art and posters surrounding the environment
- Put systems and responsibility in place so that the school/volunteer teams can carry on when you have left.
- Placements can either be with a single group or several different groups for a few weeks each, depending on the range/depth and need of projects.
Locations:
Kathmandu, Chitwan, (about 4 hours drive west from Kathmandu) and Dang, another 6 hours to the west from Chitwan
For volunteers with specific skills in Health care eg ‘NVQ in Care’ or Nursing Qualifications- placements in Old people’s homes, hospitals and other small clinics can be arranged. In this particular area the voluntary assistance needs to be quite specific and carefully planned, so if you are interested in this type of work please contact us with your suggestions. For those with a general interest in Health science but with no practical qualifications, placements can be arranged with a more educational slant, teaching these issues to classes/clubs in schools.