Discovering Nepal from far away

It is sitting in my office at the top of Mont-Gabriel in Sainte-Adèle, Quebec, that I will share with you my Nepalese experience for the next 3 months.  In doing so, I hope to be able to pass on to you the energy and enthusiasm that I have, that will make (I hope and wish) a small difference in the heart of the Himalayas.

I began my mandate (this is my first E-Volunteering experience) as a Business Development Advisor for an NGO in Nepal: T-Help Trans-Himalayan Environment and Livelihood Program, on June 7th.

T-HELP is a non-political, non-governmental and non-profit organization affiliated with the Social Welfare Board of Nepal and has been registered with the Kathmandu District Administration Office since 2008.

The organization is made up of dedicated professionals who have gained knowledge and experience in different social and entrepreneurial fields. The T-HELP team is motivated to bring positive changes in the attitude and lives of marginalized people, mostly young women and women  living in the Himalayas and other hilly areas of Nepal.

I think I was more stressed than any other field mandate I’ve done in the past. Perhaps it is due to the absence of the orderly chaos of the streets that led me to the office, the colors and scents of the cities in which I found myself or the daily contact with the people who will become, over the weeks, friends.  So I was undertaking my mandate remotely on a Monday morning, at 6:15 (16:30 in Kathmandu to be exact). I must admit that I have been up since  4:30 am reviewing my notes and drinking coffee. We can only make a good first impression.

But when the video conference started and the smiling faces of my co-workers appeared on my computer screen, the stress disappeared;  without even realizing it, here I am transported to Nepal. The exchanges are cordial, we discuss the mandate, the organization, my role, their expectations and the challenges. But above all, we talk about ourselves, who we are, our experiences, our projects. Isn’t that one of the reasons we volunteer in the first place; to discover each other and to build relationships. In fact, I want to confirm the adage « that the world is a small place » because in one of my conversations, I learned that a member of T-Help Nepal knew pretty well one of my former colleagues from Vietnam.

I’m now well settled in for my first E-Volunteering mandate. However, like any international volunteering mandate, the challenges are great. In addition to the challenges related to the differences between the time zones, the technological bugs, Nepal’s economic and political situation and differences in cultures and languages, we must add a major challenge : Covid-19.   I invite you to read the blog of our colleague Rébecca Therrien, who is currently working as a communications officer with T-Help Nepal. She describes very well the situation and the evolution of Covid-19 in Nepal. I share with her her feelings and anxieties.

In my next blog, I will tell you more about T-Help, its interventions on the field and its future plans.

Thank you for reading me and I invite you to follow me throughout my mandate.

DHANYAVAD (THANK YOU)