Patron: His Holiness The Dalai Lama TREK-AID helping Tibetan refugees in India & Nepal

Chairman of Trustees Richard Ravensdale

THREE YEAR SUMMARY OF OUR SMALL-SCALE DIRECT AID INITIATIVES

Our field work within refugee camps in Nepal and India assists Tibetan cultural, physical, medical, educational and community needs by direct-aid in small friendly scale projects. Our aim is to help the magnificent Tibetan cultural heritage survive by supporting refugee communities in a wide variety of practical initiatives. Our charity operates a possibly unique "no overheads" policy, with all100% of donors funds put into direct aid. All charity officials, committee members, and volunteers absorb their own office costs, fax, phone and post charges. Our literature and stationary printing is sponsored by a Himalayan trek company. This web site was donated and is hosted free of charge by A38.com. There are no salaried staff, expense accounts, cars or other assets to divert funds to "admin" instead of to "Aid". Our supporters have the satisfaction of knowing that every £1 raised or donated goes to refugees and their community development. The funds are used very effectively in small-scale schemes. In the last three years these have included :-

• MEDICAL PROJECTS
• CULTURE PRESERVATION
• BUILDING WORK
• ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION & HORTICULTURE
• TRAINING & BUSINESS
• EDUCATION
• ELDERLY CARE
• NEW REFUGEES

 

MEDICAL PROJECTS

• Medical supplies and medicine delivered to clinics in India and Nepal, and to Delek Hospital, India.
• Medical grants to patients to pay for tests, medicines and hospital treatment they can't afford.
• Care for geriatric patients with chronic conditions; elderly people health checks.
• UK doctors visiting refugee communities in India and Nepal, to organise medical programmes and clinics.
• Teaching Tibetan healthcare workers, refresher courses and improving their clinical knowledge.
• UK nurses, dentists, opticians, midwives to volunteer time to visit refugee camps, to give clinics.
• Physiotherapy Service initiated to help TB and Arthritis patients and new refugees with frostbite injuries.
• Surveys into under five health.
• TB screening surveys in refugee communities in Nepal and India.
• Support for the Tibetan health co-ordinator and Nursing Supervisor, based in Kathmandu, Nepal to travel to visit patients and to give refresher courses and inspiration to Community Health Workers.
• Hospital operations sponsored.
• Blood transfusions sponsored.
• Sight restoring eye operations.
• Support for the TB programme at Delek Hospital, Dharamsala.
• TB multi-drug resistant patients sponsored for treatment at Delek Hospital.
• Contributions to Delek Hospitals Volunteer Medical Staff Programme.
• Mass-refraction clinics, touring the Nepal refugee camps, to give eye tests.
• Nation-wide collection of donated glasses, through Coop Eyecare, cleanes, graded and sent to Nepal.
• Dispensing of glasses to refugees in Nepal camps and hospital treatment for eye operations.
• Sponsoring nurses training courses to be CHW's in Nepal refugee communities.
• Medical equipment donated from UK, including laboratory microscopes for in clinic testing; maternity sets; sterilising equipment etc.
• Facilities for the disabled, including supplying and repairing wheelchairs.
• Health education.
• Designing and printing of visual aid medical leaflets in Tibetan language, on TB, hygiene, physiotherapy exercises for chest infections, arthritis, plus frostbite and soft-tissue injuries amongst new refugees.
• Terminal care.
• Provision of fuel for camp ambulance.
• Assessment and home care provision for epilepsy.
• Re-roofing of clinic building, flooding in summer monsoon rains.
• Providing hearing and delivery of miniature hearing aids, donated by the Royal School for the Deaf..

CULTURE PRESERVATION

• Funded construction of a community hall, at Chairok camp, Aannapurna region, to provide an all weather public space for the community to celebrate the years main festivals together.
• Support for an elderly dance master transmitting his knowledge of the traditional Tibetan performing arts to Tibetan youth.
• Funded a culture dance group traditional costumes in a culture preservation aid-partnership project.

BUILDING WORK

• Trek Aid has built an old peoples home & village hall at Chairok refugee community, near Marpha, nepal.
• Housing surveys and community mapping project at Tarshi Palkhiel refugee community, near Hyengia, Nepal.
• Built homes for families whose houses had collapsed or were unsafe.
• Re-roofed family homes, to improve community health, replacing leaking, rusty roofs, or old thatch, (a fire risk in homes with open cooking fires and low ceilings) before summer monsoon rains.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION & HORTICULTURE

• Sponsoring the salary of a green-worker in Dharamsala, India recyling community waste.
• Sponsoring community clean ups of a refugee camps with hire of a tractor-trailer.
• Eco-protection scheme started in Pokhara, paying the salary of green-workers to organise collection of camp waste, to sort recyclable, and treat and dispose of waste in an ecologically sound way.
• Provision of vegetable seeds (sponsored by UK seed manufactures, Suttons) to four refugee camps.
• Market gardening project to supplement community income & provide school children nutrition.
• Horticulture training & vegetable growing techniques.

TRAINING & BUSINESS

• Small business improvement grants and loans.
• Lively programme of UK volunteer visits to refugee camps, sharing & transferring their skills.
• Tailoring, machine sewing and pattern cutting training for a Fair Trade scheme to export garments.
• Supplying sewing machines to a refugee Womens Association.
• Employment of Tibetan - English interpreters & a Tibetan permanent representative of Trek-Aid in Nepal to co-ordinate projects.
• Vocational training for unemployed Tibetan school leavers.
• Word-processing and computer training courses, in Nepal.
• Sponsorship by a College of Further Education for UK study courses for refugee students.

EDUCATION

• Children sponsored by UK families for education in refugee community schools in Nepal, with annual photos, reports and receipts. Children are given classes in their own culture as well as modern subjects. The cost of being a sponsor is £78 per year, to cover tuition fees of four refugee children.
• Bedding and utensils for a camp school hostel.
• Sports facilities & equipment donated to schools.
• Vocational training research.
• Environmental education supported.
• UK volunteers helping to repaint school classrooms.
• Supplying toys to nursery schools.
• Furniture supplied for a new school science lab.
• Raising self-esteem for community-based education.
• Stocked two school libraries and funded their desks and furniture.
• Full school classroom refurbishment. Desk & benches constructed by a refugee camp woodwork project.
• The Trek-Aid Football Challenge Cup, a sponsored trophy, medals and cash team prizes competed for annually in Nepal by six entirely Tibetan teams drawn from refugee communities in Nepal.
• Aid-treks organised for UK college parties to the Himalayas & refugee camps, to see how funds raised in colleges are used effectively on the spot in small scale aid initiatives.
• School awards scheme for four refugee community schools in Nepal, on the theme of culture preservation. Three prizes are awarded in each school - atibetan language essay prize on a history/culture subject: tradition performing arts prize for small groups of pupils in cultural dance competition: and a community service prize for the best effort of pupils helping others in their community.

ELDERLY CARE

• Bedding sets: warm bed quilts and pillows are purchased for elderly people who live alone.
• Trek Aid OAP homes at Charok camp have been furnished & equipped with matching funds from Help Age.
• Grants for OAP associations in India.
• One-off grants, as supplementary pensions, given to OAPs living alone in refugee communities, without family support and unable to work.

NEW REFUGEES

• Supplementary support for some new refugees arriving in Katmandu transit campo, for special nutrition, medicines, clothes and bedding, before they are sent for settlement in India.
• System for in-transit help to new refugees who have crossed from Tibet into West Nepal, to receive food, medical treatment & transport costs to go on to UN registration in the capital, Katmandu.

Trek Aid · UK Registered Charity No. 1025577 · Tel/Fax: 01752 837830

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