On 26 August, a glacier collapse sent a flash flood down the Bhote Koshi valley in Nepal, north of Kathmandu. Eighteen schools were destroyed, twenty more damaged, and around 10,000 children need help getting back into a classroom. We're looking for 100 sponsors to hold 100 school places, all the way through to graduation.
The idea
Tents, rice and blankets arrive within days and are gone within months. They matter enormously. But what decides how a family is doing in twenty years is whether the children stayed in school through the worst of it — and school fees are usually the first thing a household lets go of after losing a home.
Your money goes to a specific school in a specific ward, and the school and our local partner decide which children are closest to dropping out. You hold a place in that cohort rather than being matched to a named child, for reasons set out further down. If you'd like to hold more than one place, that's very welcome.
You cover the coming school year in one go, before it begins, so the fees are settled and nobody is waiting on money mid-term. Then you decide again the following year. Nothing is locked in — the hope is simply that you keep going until they finish.
How many places were held, how many children sat their exams, what the money actually bought, and a note from the headmaster. Photographs of the school, never of a child having a hard day. If a class wants to write to the people paying, they write one letter to all of us.
The commitment
A child in grade two today sits their school-leaving exams in 2036. That's the horizon. You renew each year, so nothing is locked in — the ask is simply that you hope to see it through.
Each bar is the total you'll have given by the end of that school year, at the $100 level.
How it works
Below. Thirty seconds, no money — you leave your name and pick a level, so I know what size this actually is.
A partner school in Rasuwa or Nuwakot identifies the children most likely to drop out, with their families' consent. That list stays with the school and the local partner. It doesn't come to sponsors, and it never goes on this website.
Fees are paid to the institution directly, never handed over in cash. At the $200 level, the school or our local partner buys uniforms, shoes and books and gives them to families as items, not money. Receipts for all of it go to every sponsor.
If your circumstances change, just say so. Because the places are funded together rather than one to one, a sponsor stepping back sends us looking for a replacement. It doesn't take a particular child's seat away.
What it costs
| $100 | One place, for one school year Fees and the costs the school bills directly. |
| $200 | A place, plus everything around it Uniform, shoes, books, exam fees — the quiet costs that push children out even when tuition is covered. Bought and handed over as items, with receipts, rather than sent as cash. |
| More | More than one place Plenty of people will want to hold two or three. Some families are splitting one between them. |
These are working estimates and they may well be wrong. Community schools in Nepal are free at basic level, so the costs that actually push a child out are uniforms, books, exam fees and the trip there — and in these districts this year, the bigger problem may be that the school building is gone. Real numbers from a real partner school will be published here before anyone is asked to send anything.
One thing to get right
Rasuwa rebuilt itself after the 2015 earthquake and it will rebuild again. Holding a place is not stepping in to save anyone. It covers one particular cost at a moment when that goes a long way for families already doing the hard part. The people in this valley have come through a great deal with far less than most of us have, and there is at least as much to learn from them as there is to offer.
No photographs of children looking sad — not here, not in the updates, not on anyone's Instagram. If we can't make the case without that photo, we should make a better case.
Sponsorship covers schooling. Everything else — what a home needs, how it's run, what comes next — stays with the people living it.
That is the more moving version of this, and we're not doing it. It would mean handling a traumatised child's name and school record, opening a private line between a stranger abroad and a minor, and splitting one classroom into the sponsored and the unsponsored. It would also mean a child losing their place whenever an adult's circumstances changed. Places are funded together and reported on together.
Where this came from
Which is the honest, slightly uncomfortable version of it. I've been abroad long enough that I now find out about my own country's disasters from a phone in a different time zone.
Nepal has had a hard run. The earthquake in 2015, floods most monsoons, and now a glacier that came down a valley in a matter of minutes. Every time, I've done something — a fundraiser, a drive, money sent to people I trust. Most of it helped for a few weeks, and then the news cycle moved and so did I.
This time I wanted something with a longer tail. School fees are unglamorous and they compound.
Real respect to the people actually doing this work on the ground — the rescue teams, the teachers, the ward officials, the neighbours who reached each other first. They are carrying the difficult part. I'm working out how to be useful from a distance, which is a smaller thing, and worth being honest about.
Sign up
This is a list, not a checkout. I'll come back to you once there's a named school, a named local partner, and a way to move money that stands up to scrutiny.
If it doesn't come together, I'll tell you that too.
If you're in Nepal
Teachers, headmasters, ward officials, people running relief in Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading or Gorkha, anyone from the affected wards, and anyone who has done this well before and can tell me where I'm about to get it wrong. Nepali or English, whichever is easier.
Or email directly: REPLACE@YOURDOMAIN.COM