Spending time with the Contact Center kids!

The Contact Center is Mitrata’s school readiness program. Children from the surrounding neighborhood attend school there until they read well enough to attend the neighborhoods private school. When they are ready to move to the private school, they typically enter at the 2nd or 3rd grade level. While at the Contact Center, the children get breakfast, lunch, and a snack. Children who are already in school come back to the Center after school to do their homework. They also get an afternoon snack. The day we were there, the children were served pasta with vegetables. The cook told me that, of course, this was there afternoon snack — who would eat pasta for dinner!

The young children at the Center learn the same types of readiness that other preschoolers do: English, Nepalese, colors, shapes, manners, how to play with others, music, and dance — when we arrived at the Center, we even saw a dance and song performance from the kids!

We also walked over to the neighborhood private school where the school yard was filled with many laughing and smiling students — many of them were Contact Center grads! Some of the sponsors met their children there, and everyone was so excited to finally meet each other. The principal also met with us and thanked us for preparing the students so well. Then he took us to some classrooms and asked the sponsored students to speak. They were confident and had no trouble answering questions.

We ended our day by visiting three of the Contact Center students’ homes. The homes were very tiny, but they were all very tidy. It was clear that these families took pride in their houses and wanted to keep them clean and nice!

A few days later we met the Contact Center students at the zoo. They were so excited to see us and show us all of the animals. We saw snowbirds, playful monkeys, tigers, and a hippo. We finally went back to the meeting area where we had lunch of momos and pizza. I was told by many of the kids that this was their favorite lunch.

Then we celebrated 3 of the trip-goers’ birthdays with a yummy chocolate cake. Someone put on music, and all the students danced and played.

From visiting the Contact Center, it was clear that it makes a huge contribution to the welfare and education of these children — most of them will go on to college someday! But with all of the obstacles in Nepal, helping these underprivileged children get an education and improve their health takes a village. And how we lucky we are that that village is so wonderful and caring.

— Ricki Koppel