A Busy Day At The Contact Center
Eight sponsors, Dr. Christine Schutz and Anna Wertman spent a busy day at the new Contact Center, our early childhood school readiness program in Balaju, Kathmandu. After relocating to a new space nearly a year ago, the Contact Center now resides in a 3.5 story building with many classrooms, four bathrooms, a large living room and kitchen, a rooftop terrace, and a playground, too!
Our Contact Center program, where children aged 3-10 years old are provided an educational foundation in a nurturing environment, follows a program format similar to the Montessori model. Here they are taught basic skills, including reading, writing, and an introduction to the English language. They are also provided with much needed hygiene, counseling, healthcare and two high-quality, protein-rich meals and snacks daily.
During the pandemic, the Contact Center served as an emergency preparedness shelter to distribute relief care packages to our children’s families, as well as a safe place for teachers to meet one on one with children. The relief packages contained ready-to-eat or easy-to-make nutritious food supplies, soaps for hand washing, and masks. The packages also contained children books, note copybooks, and toys to keep the children creatively engaged at home. These relief packages greatly depleted the Center’s cache of supplies. Our visiting sponsors led a donation drive to replenish the educational materials, toys and cuddly stuffed animals. Documentary filmmaker and child sponsor Amy Benson filmed the children discovering the donations.
We enjoyed playing with the children, meeting new Contact Center staff, watching them perform many dances and songs, and sitting down to a delicious and nutritious lunch with lots of protein. After spending a busy morning at the Contact Center, we left the children to their studies and went to visit the Vibhuti Vidhya Mandir School.
Vibhuti serves as our primary elementary school for the Contact Center graduates entering second or third grade who are able to continue their education through grade 10 while still living at home. Once a child graduates from the Contact Center, BSF staff led by their psycho-social counselor, performs home visits to meet with parents or guardians to determine if their child should continue their studies while living at home or be placed in a boarding school. If a boarding school is determined then, we enroll them at Reliance Residential School through grade 10.
While at Vibhuti, our sponsors were able to meet with the school Principal, along with BSF’s Executive Director, Leena Satyal, and ask questions about the school’s operating procedures or their sponsored children.
Our visit to Vibhuti completed, we made our way back to the Contact Center. We were then able to take a walk through the neighborhood and visit a few of our Contact Center students at home. There, we met with their parents and guardians, and were even welcomed in to spend a bit of time with them in their homes.
