Reviews of Volunteer Programs in Nepal

Ann Wilson, Volunteers Initiative Nepal (VIN) alum

Ann Wilson, volunteered with VIN NOV-DEC 2010 after her honeymoon to Mount Everest Basecamp. She's Danish, but lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Ann is a demand and supply planning supervisor in an multinational company. Upon my return from Nepal she founded Friends of VIN – who now partner with VIN.

Morning: I lived in a village about a 45 min. bus ride outside Kathmandu. A typical day would start around 6am. Aama (mother in Nepali) would start washing the dishes from the night before and start preparing breakfast; daal bhaat (rice and lentil soup). Preparing breakfast in rural Nepal isn’t as simple as it sounds – it takes about 90 min. to cook the rice, grind the masala, cook the lentils…all done over an open fire.

Teaching: After breakfast I would walk to school where the students sang the national anthem every day at morning assembly followed by some simple exercise. There were about 35 children in the ECD (early childhood development) class where I taught basic English and math. We would always start with a bit of singing and then divide the group of 3-12 year olds into small and bigger children.

Ann volunteered with children in Nepal

My very first day was a bit of challenge. I had agreed with the Nepalese teacher that I would just follow her and then we would discuss how to continue, but in the last period she had to go to another class to teach and asked me if I thought I would be OK having the kids on my own…The minute she exited the class, the kids went CRAZY. I eventually gained the children’s respect and it was much easier after that.

Free time: After school I would sometimes visit other volunteers, go for walks in the hills or prepare for the following school day, but I would always be home just before dark. That’s when we start preparing dinner – daal bhaat – and around 8-8.30pm we would usually go to bed. It’s limited what you can do when you don’t have any electricity.

Learn more about volunteering in Nepal with VIN.

Cheryl Amos, Insight Nepal volunteer alum

In 2001-2002, Cheryl had a sabbatical year from work, which she and her husband used to travel extensively, mostly in Asia. A couple from Toronto, Canada, in their early 50’s at the time, decided that as part of this year, they wanted to do a period of volunteering in Nepal.

The Insight Nepal program included a week of Nepali lessons and orientation, a week of trekking in the Annapurna mountains near Pokhara, a visit to Chitwan National Park, and eight weeks placement at a school in Pokhara. For our week of orientation, we stayed with a local family, and then moved to the home of one of the teachers at our school, for the placement period. Although the program provided us with room and board for the entire period of our placement, we chose to spend a day or so each weekend in the tourist part of Pokhara (Lakeside), which gave us both a “tourist” experience as well as the volunteer experience.

Our host families were both very welcoming. We became part of the family, experiencing the Nepali way of life, such as eating with our hands, that we would never have experience as tourists (tourists are always provided with cutlery). When a cousin of our host family was married, we were invited to the wedding. We ate breakfast and dinner with our host family; lunch was provided at school. We walked to and from school with the daughter of the family, who was a teacher at the school.

Cheryl volunteered with children in Nepal

We had no prior experience as teachers. The major contribution we made was to expose the students to native speakers of English. Using story books, we had the children read out loud, practicing English pronunciation, and we also played games designed to increase their vocabulary. Grades 3 and 4 were easiest, as the students had enough English to understand us, but we also spent a couple of weeks filling in for the teacher of the very youngest group, who was away on her honeymoon. We used a book originally developed for members of the Peace Corps, to study and improve our Nepali. We found the language fairly easy to learn, and enjoyed being able to converse in Nepali both with members of our host family and other people that we met.

Learn more about volunteering with Insight Nepal.