The field work story of a challenging year. It started off well...

The year started well with a field trip in January to to our sponsorship program in DURLUNG, NEPAL, bringing medical supplies.

Health workers who teach and give first aid in the school got medical supplies, and our girls got sanitary pads

We went back to India to start up our annual

SCHOOL BAG PROJECT in Sonada, West Bengal

where 73 children from very poor families got school uniform and school things for a whole school year.

The annual school bag project helps very poor children outside of our regular sponsorship programs

Shenpen field worker Urgyen Tsering, and field worker Heidi Trondsen (behind) in Nepal in January

Poor children in Sonada got WARM WINTER CLOTHES

Shenpen´s Lama Changchub visited Sonada Tibetan Settlement in February, here planning much needed hostel renovation with staff

Shenpen Aid Field work and projects in India and Nepal 2020

Etternavnet ditt

We heard news about the corona virus spreading in China, right across the Himalayas from Sonada. I went to Nepal early in March to try to start off our school bag project in Pokhara. But it became too late.

The boarders suddenly closed on 25th March and we came into a sudden LOCKDOWN. All schools, transport and businesses closed with four hours´ notice. In India, millions of migrant workers got stuck far away from home. Eight of our 63 sponsored children in Sonada got stuck in the hostel without school for many months because of closed boarder to Nepal.

People lost their jobs, and suddenly the poorest day workers got much poorer. It took only a couple of weeks before many families we knew were in desperate need of food.

SHENPEN GOT VERY BUSY PROVIDING FOOD TO PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR JOBS

People got rice, dal, cooking oil, vegetables, soap, enough to cook simple food at home for many days or weeks and stay safe.

Shenpen field worker Urgyen Tsering distributed food in SONADA AND DARJEELING HILLS from beginning of April and throughout the year. In cooperation with local organizations, he visited more than 30 tea estates where unemployed workers were stuck, and many remote villages in the Darjeeling hill area.

More than thousand families got food rations, stuck people were driven home, and desperate families also got help with medical expenses. Santitizers were produced when the shops were sold out. Much work was done together with Friends Forever Organization and United Himalayan Organization.

Eight of our sponsored children in Sonada got stuck for many months in the lockdown

Shenpen field worker Urgyen Tsering helped more than a thousand families with food supplies in Darjeeling District in India

«We would rather die of covid-19 tomorrow than of hunger today»

NEPAL: I got stuck in Nepal and distributed food in POKHARA until June, together with kind local volunteers. As the government food program reached very few, people lined up in the street to get food. Laborers, hotel workers, cleaners and housemaids, trekking guides and drivers had lost their work. We also helped many young students who got stuck far from home without food.

20 mothers from our annual school bag project got extra help. The project could not be executed, but when single mothers don´t have work, children go hungry.

I got home on a resque fligth to Norway in June.

HELPING HANDS FROM MONKS AND NUNS

To reach more desperate people, monks and nuns from three different monasteries in India helped us with food distribution in the spring and summer.

Lama Rinzin and helpers delivered food to hundreds of very poor families in Siliguri

Sita BK, Sima Gurung and Heidi Trondsen distributed food in Pokhara, Nepal

Monks and nuns in Siliguri, Tilokpur and Sonada helped with food distribution to poor families

Monks in Sed-Guyed Monastery distributed food to more than 500 families in Siliguri, a big city in West Bengal.

Nuns in Tilokpur Nunnery distributed food to several hundred poor workers and locals in Himachal Pradesh.

Monks in Samdup Dargay Choeling Monastery distributed food to poor locals in Sonada in West Bengal.

FOOD TO WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN SAFE HOME, NEPAL Long Term Safe Home for women and

children in Kalika, near Pokhara, got food rations for several months. Our two sponsored girls here are safe and fine.

Our partner Kopila Nepal also gave food aid from Shenpen to hundreds of marginalized families in POKHARA AND KASKI DISTRICT in Nepal in the lockdown months.

Bina Silwal in Kopila Nepal, and women and children in Safe Home who got food rations for several months

Our plans to help Kopila Nepal with printing and distribution of the newly translated Nepalese version of Mental health and gender based violence, A Training Manual had to be postphoned due to the pandemic.

Our food aid also reached our DURLUNG sponsored girls and other poor people there. Due to the lockdown, our partner Prem Bishwokarma could only reach there in October. He also brought school books and festival clothes. The students are now getting homework from school.

LUCKY NOT TO LOSE SCHOOL: These little boys from our sponsorship program in Sed-Guyed Monastery in Siliguri were lucky not to lose school in the pandemic. The gates of the monastery closed on March 18th to keep them safe from the virus, so they have been present to get their education every day.

But the elders had some challenges getting food to them in the long lockdown.

FOOD TO MONKS AND NUNS: 300 monks

and nuns in Sed-Guyed, Sonada and Tilokpur got food funds from Shenpen during the worst lockdown period.

Sindhupalchwok, Nepal. Food aid to people who lost their houses in landsslide in the summer

People who lost their houses in landslide in SINDHUPALCHWOK, NEPAL got food aid through social worker Anamika Aryal. She also distributed food from Shenpen to hundreds of unemployed and vulnerable families in KATHMANDU.

Many more kind helpers assisted in distributing food to people who lost their livehood in the covid-19 crisis.

SKILLS TRAINING Several students in our skills training

support program got their education completely disrupted by the school closures this year, only getting some online teachings from the autumn. Other students were luckier:

Asis became a paragliding pilot, and Sushma became a doll maker

Asis (20), who only has class 7, got training and pilot lisence for paragliding in January. He has to train another 1-2 years before he can start taking passengers in Pokhara – where paragliding is a good trade. Sushma (28), who cannot read and write, finished part one of her doll making traning just in time to practise making teddybears at home during the lockdown months.

TASHILING CLINIC IN SONADA TIBETAN SETTLEMENT

has been running normally, implementing covid-19 measures and doing lots of information work. The hostel children who normally crowd the clinic were missing since March. Medicine funds from Shenpen have been redirected to cover costs for screening, sanitation and other services for the locals.

Our HEALTH PROJECT IN TILOKPUR NUNNERY in

Himachal Pradesh has been going normally, except in the strict lockdown months when nobody could move and the Tibetan doctors could not come from Men-Tsee Khang Institute in Dharamsala to treat the nuns.

We had plans to go for project visit to Tilokpur this winter for the three year evaluation of the project , but the covid situation means the trip has to be postphoned. The nuns have communicated that they need more funds for herbs. The project is in cooperation with Karma Tashi Ling, and part of HH Karmapa´s Health Project for Nuns.

The long lockdown months gave us the chance for

much needed RENOVATION PROJECTS

SONADA HOSTELS were in very bad condition

and got total renovation this year. Work has been going on for many months. Buildings have been repaired, plastered and painted, a new bathroom and 4 new toilets built, some windows and doors repaired or changed. The result is better facilities and happy colours.

TUITION ROOM was also painted in November.

Sadly, the most important thing, the school children, are still missing. Missing school.

Pandemics can luckily give rise to good ideas and new growth:

COMPOST PROJECT IN SONADA MONASTERY Food

waste from nearly 100 monks daily is piling up when there is no official garbage collection, like it is in Indian villages. We are happy to support Sonada Monastery with construction of a compost unit that will transform food waste into good soil for farming. The monks are getting more concious of environmental issues and garbage disposal, a great need in India.

Lama Tsering Wangdi is leading the compost project. Here looking for suitable area to build the compost unit

To all the generous sponsors who helped us through this

challenging year: A BIG THANK YOU!

WIthout you all this work would not have been possible.

As the pandemic seems to last, we strive to continue our relief work!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

from Shenpen Aid

Heidi Trondsen, Field work coordinator

We in Shenpen are especially PROUD this year of our field worker Urgyen Tsering, who did frontline covid-19 relief work since April and travelled to remote places to reach people in need.

Shenpen field worker Urgyen Tsering received a local price for efficient covid-19 relief work in Sonada in the summer, together with Friends Forever Organization

Thanks to Urgyen and all generous helpers in India and Nepal, the tireless Shenpen workers in Norway and all the KINDNESS, COMPASSION and GENEROSITY that makes this work possible.

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