Wide Open Vistas

Hi friends, we hope this finds everyone healthy and looking forward to good things in 2021. Per posts on our website (www.wideopenvistas.org), we have been in the process of closing down WOV for much of the year. It has been a good run for ~8 years and with your help, we've been able to contribute in a meaningful way. But it is also apparent that other organizations working in Nepal have better capacity and more feet on the ground to accomplish mission-driven work; we are grateful to Canopy Nepal for working with us in the past and for leveraging the donations we have received and continuing forward with our congruent missions related to keeping kids in school.

The board elected earlier this year to send emergency relief funds directly to families. This was done with two disbursements. And in our summer board meeting we elected to transfer all remaining assets to Canopy, and that has now been accomplished. The Nepal chapter of WOV is being dissolved and the US chapter moving into inactive status. An itemized list of expenditures/transfers is below, you may notice that a little over $7,000 is earmarked for funding a WOV scholar through university! We hope you will follow the great work that Canopy Nepal is doing in Nepal and consider supporting them in the future. https://canopynepal.com/

Thank you once again from the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of the board, staff, families, and students of WOV. -Seth

Approximated dissolution of assets*
Transfer to Canopy: 1,065,066 NPR to Canopy (~$9075 USD)
Within this is 850,000 NPR (~$7242.85 USD) for a scholarship for a WOV student who is attending University.
Family relief funds: 316,600 NPR (~$2697 USD) in May and same in Sept
Tuition 126,000 NPR (~$1073.65) to families
Medical allowance 21,000 NPR (~178.94 USD) to families

*Final numbers to be provided in Annual Report on www.wideopenvistas.org by end of January.

Wide Open Vistas Dedicated to supporting the educational and health needs of children in Nepal.

We hope everyone is keeping safe and listening to experts advice during these difficult times. At the moment, amidst lockdown in Nepal, WOV is trying to find the best way to reach out to WOV scholars and their parents to help. Most of our scholar's parents are daily wage earners or small shop owners. Due to lockdown - since past two weeks - in Nepal, parents can't go to work (as with the case with most people around the world) and has put a financial strain in families. We will update as the situation progresses.. Stay home, stay safe.

Another story written by Nikita Karki, one of the participants of the 5 day KathaBanaun workshop.

The Soul in My Room_Nikita Karki.pdf

Welcome to the new year 2020. We would like to share a story written by Sumina Tamang, one of the participants of the 5 day KathaBanaun workshop to start our new year. More stories will be shared later.

A Mysterious Man_Sumina Tamang.pdf

Wide Open Vistas wishes a Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you. We would like to share the report from the 5 day KathaBanaun workshop. The stories that the participants wrote will follow later. Keep following the stories and thank you for your love and support. Thank you Canopy Nepal team for your amazing work.

Katha Buanun VI 2019 Report.pdf

Huge applauds to the 20 students sponsored by WOV on successfully graduating the 5 day KathaBanaun workshop. During the workshop, students learned about different aspects of story writing, watched short film, along with active discussions on the LGBTQ+ community and their representation in Nepali society. They wrote stories themed around social issues sharing their personal experiences in the stories and presented them beautifully through drama and drawings. Additionally, we express our gratitude to Canopy Nepal team and Himalaya school. Photo Credit: Learners’ Hub.

WOV is sponsoring 20 kids from Himalaya Boarding High School to participate in Canopy Nepal's Learners’ Hub: Katha Bunaun program - a workshop to inspire students to be creative, gain confidence in their ability to write, and to find joy in writing. WOV family is very excited to be a part of it.

Wide Open Vistas family wishes you all a happy and prosperous Tihar 2019. Thank you for helping us keep up our mission of supporting the educational and health needs of disadvantaged children in Nepal. You can always donate here:
http://wideopenvistas.org/donate/

Thank you Matt and Jo from Langtang fastpack 2019 for your fund raising for Wide Open Vistas. We are very grateful for all the love and support we have been getting from the participants of Himalayan Adventure Labs.

Here is a long delayed summer update! School visits, Wilderness First Aid Classes, fundraisers in Belgium and beyond!

We hope everyone is doing well. If anyone would like to get more involved, there are several fronts we could use help on (including getting updates like this one out more frequently). Updates and ways to help posted on: http://wideopenvistas.org/2019/08/summer-2019-update/

Summer 2019 Update Time flies! The WOV Board met last month for our quarterly meeting – you can find our minutes online, but a more readable version of what we’ve been busy with is below. The gist is tha…

Hi everyone - a little catch up here. We are having a board meeting in a couple weeks (June 13th, all are welcome to attend, just email or message us) and we will have a newsletter out by the end of the month.

But we wanted to say a big thanks the Sjabi School in Puurs (Belgium) an dYves Stevens. Every year, the school organizes a charity walk every with more than 1,500 students raising funds for ten selected charity projects. Yves Stevens, who was on a Himalayan Adventure Labs fastpack around the Annapurna Circuit and who helped us with the Children's Race in Manang recommended that WOV be one of the ten selected charity projects. In total, the school raised 2,800 Euros! These funds will be put to good use supporting children at our schools in northern Kathmandu. Thank you Sjabi School and Yves!

What do people like more? Image 1 with the solid borders or Image 2 with rough borders? We are making bandanas to give to all participants of our upcoming wilderness first aid class. Each student (20 girls from high schools in northern Kathmandu and 20 female guides) will each get trained and certified in Wilderness First Aid on April 6th and will also receive a first aid kit. Instead of a single-purpose arm sling, we are giving them over-sized bandanas. These can be used for sun protection, and also as arm slings (and we thought it would be a good idea to print some helpful advice on them). Thanks to Nikita and Sudeep for doing so much of the logistical groundwork, Shekhar Thapa for the graphic design. The classes will be led by Dr. Jessie Gehner, an emergency medicine physician from Virginia. She has graciously volunteered to teach these sessions along with 11 medical students. Stay tuned and let us know which design we should go with...