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= The Nagajuna Trust Charity =

The Nagajuna Trust is a UK based charitable organization, created to help impoverished and orphaned Tibetan children with housing, education, care and support in Pokhara, Nepal, UK registration no 1107878.

The Trust has it's own website where it keeps interested people, sponsors and donors updated with the latest news.

The Trust tries to make at least one visit each year to the school, by either a trustee, a family member, or friend. These trips are always self-funded by the individuals travelling.

History of the Trust
In 2004 a group from the UK set up The Nagajuna Trust, which aims to raise money to support the school. Now a UK registered charity, number 1107878, The Nagajuna Trust allows funds to be collected in the UK and sent to Nepal. The trust has a small number of members supported by people who make either a regular contribution, or do sponsored events. The members of the trust live across the UK and meets on a regular basis in person or using teleconference. Sponsors are kept updated with newsletters, and now, of course, with this website!

Strong ethos
The Trust has a very strong ethos when it comes to how it raises and manages the donations that people make. A key principle of the trust is that all money collected reaches the children of the Nagajuna School. The only expenditure that the Trust has is for the quarterly international bank transfer, all other costs are met by the members of the Trust.

Funding the school
The school is majority funded with money from sponsors, and partly with money from a shop selling Tibetan jewellery and curios, which is run by Yeshi’s family. The cost per child is about £14 per month. This covers food, education, salaries, house rent, medical care, clothing, etc.

To date we have been able to keep the school going with the income from regular donations from a small group of loyal sponsors, fund raising events and the income from the sale of jewellery. Gradually we have managed to find more people to support the school, thus the school has been able to grow in size.

= The Nagajuna Modern Boarding School =

How the school was created
The Nagajuna Modern Boarding School was founded by Yeshi Gyaltsen from Pokhara, Nepal. His mother passed away when he was five and his father passed away a few years later. His father’s friends sent him to India to an orphanage. He went on to receive a higher education at Drepung Loseling Monastic University in South India.

After he graduated he taught for eight years as a volunteer at Drepung Loseling Buddhist cultural school. In 1994 he joint Mount Kailash School in Pokhara, Nepal. In 1999 he made a pilgrimage to Muktinath in Mustang. There he met many poor people and they told him they did not have a good school and many poor or orphaned children worked as shepherds rather than go to school.

Their plight made him sad and he remembered how he had been helped as a child. So he decided that with the support of his wife, his friends and his own savings, he would set up a small school to provide education, shelter and clothing for neglected children. On 4th September 2000 he opened the school with 7 children and 3 staff members.

Number of children

 * At it's peak there were 120 children (2009-2010)
 * At present (2011-2012) there are nearly 100 children in education. 89 of which are full-time care, aged 4-16, of which about 40 are orphans. About 10 children live outside the school with relatives, and are collected daily.

The recruitment process
Yeshi has a unique requirement process to populate the school. Each summer he walks for twenty days through the Himalaya Mountains and around Mustang, visiting the villages. In consultation with the village chief, he collects needy orphans and poor children, and then walks back through the mountains.

What do the children learn?
The subjects that taught are: Nepali, Tibetan English, Social studies, Math and Science. These last subjects are taught in English. The subjects are tested with a term test, 6 monthly test, and a yearly exam. Besides this, there are quizes, handwriting, spelling, singing and dancing contests. There are 9 teachers, sometimes volunteers and 3 other staff. School days are Sunday to Friday, and the children are free Friday afternoon and Saturdays.

= Building a new school =

The School 2000 – 2008
Nagajuna Modern Boarding School was founded in a rented three story house with nine rooms, three bedrooms for the children, two for classes, one for staff, a kitchen, storeroom and a small office. The school had 120 students and their ages ranged from 3 to 15. The school has always been housed in rented property, and this has been an ongoing struggle in many different ways for the staff and children of the school, as the properties were never designed to house a boarding school. in 2008 the landlord of the previous school has sold the property it and they were forced to leave at the end of December 2008. A former hotel near the airport was found, but at a much higher rent. Additionally, Pokhara is densely populated and land is at a premium as it’s sandwiched between mountains and a lake.

Building a new school
The only option, to provide a sustainable future for the children, is to build a new school. This would also give the added benefit of being able to build ‘fit for purpose’ and give the ability to support more desperately needy children. In 2009 a decision is made to try to raise additional funding to procure land, and build a school.

Building progress
The aim is to have the entire school completed in 2012. As always the search for funds never stops!
 * Beginning of 2010 - a suitable plot is identified in a rice field on the outskirts of the city.
 * August 2010 - Thanks to a vast number of small and large donations, sufficient funds have been raised to buy the plot. The next challenge is to find funding to level the ground, create a solid foundation and start the building work.
 * July 2011 - the foundations are in, and the metal work for the pillars is raised.
 * November 2011 - the ground floor and first floor are built. Work can start on creating walls
 * February 2012 - the roof of the first floor is being constructed.

= Donations and Fundraising events =

International donations
Because of the network of the trustees, donations are made by people all over the world. To manage this, a justgiving account has been set up, where people, using their credit card, can make one-off or monthly payments.

UK taxpayers
For UK taxpayers, gift aid is automatically added and credited to the charity. this is The Nagajuna Trust Justgiving link.

Support from charitable organisations
Another important way of raising funds is through the application to other charitable organisations, like the PMC in the Netherlands, and individual's ability to raise funds in their own circle of friends, their place of work, or through their own connections with local charitable organisations.

Raising funds through charity events
The trustees, their friends and families, have now run a number of charity events. Below is a short list, but many more were held by friends and family:
 * In July 2009 the "National Three Peaks Challenge" was successfully completed in 23.5 hours by 2 teams of 6 people
 * in 2010 the "Yorkshire Three Peaks" was successfully completed in 12 hours
 * in 2011 the "Canoeing down the Thames", 127 miles from Cricklade Town Bridge to Teddington Lock was successfully completed in 4 days by 3 people. A seperate blog was maintained to keep people updated with the preparations.

= The use of Social Media = To maximise the exposure of all the good work that the charity and school do for the children, many different social media methods are used for communication:
 * There is a Facebook group - thenagajunatrust - which is a great forum for discussions and the latest news
 * They have a Youtube channel - nagajunatrust - for videos that have been taken by people during their visits to the school
 * There is a Twitter account - @NagajunaTrust - specifically for keeping sponsors updated when special events happen
 * a Flickr account - nagajunatrust - for photos, either of fundraising events, or photos taken during visits to the school

= External Links =
 * The Nagajuna Trust Website
 * Facebook Group
 * Youtube Channel
 * @NagajunaTrust
 * Nagajunatrust Photos