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The Nationwide Scholarship Program North America (NSP-NA) team is delighted to inform you about our partnership with Santi School Project (SSP). SSP is building a school in Ramche Village in Sindhupalchowk District, a village where children have gone without a school for more than eight years financial and political problems.

Christopher Heun, the President of SSP, met with members of Society of Ex-Budhanilkantha School Students North America (SEBS-NA) at Annual Nepali Association (ANA) convention in New York in July 2006. At that point, Chris had begun putting pieces together to launch his school project. Chris visited Ramche in 2003 while he was backpacking in Nepal. A couple of years after he came back from that trip to Ramche, Chris realized that he could do something good for those villagers who hosted him so generously. He decided to make a difference by helping build a school in the village.

After the meeting at the ANA convention, Yubraj Acharya, the Secretary of SEBS-NA, worked with Chris to develop the proposal for the project. Meanwhile, Bijaya Babu Shiwakoti, the Chairperson of Nationwide Scholarship Program (NSP), moved the project along by working Chris’s contacts in Nepal.

Here is how we will work over the next few years. We hope to begin construction on the school by the end of this year and enroll students by the end of next year. NSP will help local leaders in Ramche plan the construction of the school and register it with the proper authorities, the Village Development Committee and District Education Office.

SEBS-NA will provide advice on educational matters such as teacher training and curriculum development. SEBS-NA directed NSP-NA to help achieve those goals and to ease communication between NSP in Kathmandu and SSP.

NSP-NA has also pledged to raise $5,000 out of the $20,000 needed to build the school. To begin our fundraising drive, Chris is hosting a private cookout at a church in Baltimore on June 10. This is our first fundraising effort and over the next few months, you will hear more about our other fundraising drives. To fulfill our pledge, we will not only look for donors within our SEBS network, but we will also attempt to tap into donors outside our network.

Please visit Santi School Project’s website at www.santischool.org to learn more about them.

If you have any questions about the project or the fundraising campaign, email us at nspna@sebsonline.org.