OUR MISSION

*  TO IMPROVE LIFE AND EDUCATION IN NALANG AND THE SURROUNDING AREA SO THAT IT BECOMES A MODEL EXAMPLE FOR THE WHOLE OF NEPAL TO FOLLOW AND ALSO SO IT TO BECOME A CENTRE OF EDUCATIONAL AND SPORTING EXCELLENCE 

* TO IMPROVE THE EDUC ATION, HEALTH, EQUALITY AND STANDARD OF LIVING IN ALL RURAL AREAS OF NEPAL

Whilst he founded The Yearley Trust in 2010 it was not until the end of 2018 that John Yearley heard about the Nalang Model Acadamy and the remarkable community of Nalang that built the school.

A chance Facebook friends request from Shankar Silwal in August 2018 bought the school to his attention. John was immediately impressed that the community in Nalang, which mainly consisted of uneducated subsistence farmers, many of whom lived below the poverty line and so much wanted a better future for their children that they got together and built a school. A massive enterprise without earth moving equipment or concrete mixers etc so everything hand to be done by hand. Nevertheless, after a lot of hard work the school was built and opened and immediately proved to be a success. 

However, in 2015 disaster struck in the form of the massive earthquake that struck Nepal and destroyed or damaged over 90% of the buildings in the country including the school.  

Article from The Guardian about the current situation in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake

Undaunted this remarkable community gathered themselves up and the first thing they did was to rebuild the school even before they started repairing their own houses. Unfortunately, many of them still can’t afford to repair their houses and many are still unsafe to sleep in.

Since then the donation of a small factory making Interlocking Stabilised Soil Blocks by the Trust has given the community an affordable medium to help rebuild their damaged houses.

John was also impressed that in a country that is very patriarchal that the community promoted girl’s rights and that 50% of the pupils studying science at 6^th form level were girls. So, he donated some equipment to help with their science teaching. A little later he received letters of thanks from all the science pupils, one of which, from Rojina Silwal, gave him more information about the school and decided him to put all his efforts, and that of the Trust, behind improving things in Nalang. He immediately recruited two new trustees for the Charity and one, Doriana Dimitrova, in particular, was also so impressed that since then she has been working non-stop alongside John to do everything that they could to improve things in Nalang. 

Since the start of 2018 The Yearley Trust has, or is currently,

• Totally refurbished the Nalang Model Academy School (NMA) including new desks and classroom equipment

• Doubled the number of classrooms including provision of a computer room and a large covered outdoor meeting area

• Donated 14 computers for the computer room, also books to the school library

• Provided glazed windows in the school classrooms when none existed before

• Had a new school kitchen built to provide catering for both the school and the hostel

• Constructed a fully equipped small medical centre to serve the whole community of Nalang

• Built large multipurpose room for use by the school and the community

• Paid for the construction of a 400,000 litre water tank to provide water during the dry season

• Gave a whole new science lab equipped for Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology

• Enabled the school to now offer lessons to years 11 and 12. The first of these pupils are now studying at University

• Subsidising teacher’s salaries

• Paid for two day educational coach trips for pupils

• Upgraded the school internet services

• Set up a working relationship between The Nalang Model Academy school and two schools in England and have helped teachers from both English schools to visit Nalang. The oldest English School, New College School was founded in1379, 627 years before the foundation of the NMA

• Provided a new school toilet block with special provision for girls and women teachers

• Provided a large school playground. They did not have one before

• Provided a cricket net for cricket practice

• Run free five day residential courses in mainly agricultural subjects to improve the efficiency and income of local subsistence farmers

• Are providing a full-size sports ground for the school (in course of construction) and have arranged with the MCC foundation for the provision of some cricket coaching when the sports ground is completed. The work on the ground involves levelling terraces in the hillside, the highest equivalent to a 16/17 storey building above the lowest.

• Built a 56 bed hostel with shower and toilet block for pupils to stay in during the monsoon rains when it is too dangerous for them the go home. Also to be used by visiting parties of young people from schools in England.

• Built a new kitchen block for the hostel, school, and community use

• Built a small medical centre (opened October 2019) which is staffed by a medically qualified member of our staff

• Organised and financed essential hospital treatment in the capital Kathmandu for members of the community

• Organised and financed an eye and hearing health clinic where 1517 people were given eye tests, over 600 were provided with free glasses and 147 free cataract operations were performed.

• Hold regular health checks, including dental checks, on all the children in the community

• Recently built special en suite accommodation to encourage teachers from the capital Kathmandu to come and stay and teach at the school. It is also available for teachers etc from England who might like a short visit to the school.

• Provided an electricity generator to be used during the very frequent power cuts and provided solar powered back up lighting for the hostel

• Provided a car to encourage pupils to learn about engineering and also to act as a form of emergency ambulance for the long journey to the nearest hospital

• In addition to the new sports ground, we are providing land for the communities first ever market and also land for a basic driving school. Both of which will have a significant effect on the local economy

• Donated some football, volleyball and Kwik cricket equipment to the school

• Donated the equipment for a factory making Interlocking Stablished Soil Blocks (ISSB). These use soil as their main ingredient, do not require any heat in production so are much more environmentally friendly and are cheaper and stronger than bricks. People are using these to repair their earthquake damaged homes and they also have been used for all the new building work at the school.

• Formed a women’s cooperative to provide employment opportunities for women to earn their own income.

• Are running a series of very popular free five-day courses in rural schools to train teachers how to teach English to young pupils in a fun way using the well proven Ical (International Centre for Accelerative Learning) system

• At the end of each course donated two work copy books, a pencil, eraser and pencil sharper to every pupil in the school and a special teacher training pack to all teachers on the course.

• Are supporting 5 girls from Nalang to study at Universities in Nepal

• With the help of the Israeli Embassy in Kathmandu brought some leading academics from Israel to provide teacher training

In addition, the Trust:

• Pays the school fees of 21 pupils whose parents could not afford the fees;  provided a solar powered lighting system for the hostel as well as an emergency back up portable generator for the school; and has provided science text books; donated computers, laptops and digital cameras; given the school various teaching aids including  an interactive computer controlled whiteboard.

!  The Trust is also working with the American charity ICAL to use their system of teaching English to young children in third world countries and to educate teachers in other schools on how to use the system.

!  The Trust has done a lot since our first small donation, but we need your help to do even more for this remarkable community.

!  See OUR CAUSES for more details

• The nearest medical facility before our appearance was a minimum of 5 hours walk across hazardous mountain tracks but since the beginning of 2019, we have been paying the salary of Shankar Silwal who is suitable qualified and authorised by the government to provide medical services to the community as well as paying for all his medical supplies.
• The Trust also pays all charges for essential hospital treatment for the people of Nalang
• In March 2020 he organised on our behalf for a team of specialists to visit Nalang to carry out eye and hearing tests. The team managed to carry out checks on 1,185 people and issued both reading and prescription glasses as required and also carried out dental checks but unfortunately the advent of lockdown, due to Covid-19, meant that we were not able to go ahead with the various planned cataract operations.

!  The Trust has ambitious plans to expand our activities to assist other communities in rural Nepal in 2021 onwards so has recruited additional  staff in addition to Shankar (see OUR Team) and has set up The Yearley Trust Centre of Excellence  to help fulfil our mission. Our team in Nepal now number 18 either full time of part time staff.

We are very proud that we are working on 11 of the 18 UN Sustainable Development Coals

The Yearley Trust is an English Charity No 1136219 and is an equal opportunities employer