Are you passionate and willing to give your time to help others?

We are always in need of motivated individuals in Japhe to move this project forward. In return for your energy and time, we offer you accommodation.

Please remember that everyone needs time to adapt when they arrive here, and changing things quickly isn’t often possible – so, we prefer longer term volunteers to short stays so that there is more impact. There is always daily work to be done such as orientating newer volunteers or even working in the kitchen and much much more.

Please contact us if you think you can help us with any of the following tasks.

Working at the current school; whilst the new school building is being built there is still work to be done at the current school site – the main priority now is to work with the local teachers: to help them to teach better, helping with their english and, also, gently encouraged to vary their teaching styles. We also are always looking for enthusiastic teachers in English and science. We would also love to welcome anyone who can teach other interesting topics like geography, mathematics, sports, wrestling, yoga, history, astronomy, dance and art.

Working in the community; there are many ways that we hope to support the local community in the future. Firstly, it would be great if trained medical professionals would like to spend an extended time here to help to increase the quality of medical care at the local medical center. Otherwise, the main source of income for the region is through agriculture which is going under more and more strain due to growing financial pressures. We would love to welcome anyone with experience of working with traditional communities to help them improve their traditional farming methods.

Volunteers  Guidelines

Himalayan Spirit Academy is located in one of the remote parts of Nepal.

It is situated in Japhe-6, Dolakha district which is about 165 Km Far East from Kathmandu.

Our main goal is to support the development of the local community with our small efforts.

We believe that education is the strongest power when it comes to develop a miserable local community.

Currently, we are trying to provide better education to each kids living in this area. So, we offer a vacancy for the people who would like to serve the humanity with the open heart. Our school have three kindergarten [nursery, LKG (lower kindergarten), UKG(upper kindergarten)] and four primary classes.

How to reach school’s hostel?

It takes about 6/7 hour to reach Japhe (Jamune) from Kathmandu. Generally, bus goes direct from Kathmandu to Jamune (the name of station where you should get off) but sometimes, in rainy season, you might have to walk for one and a half hour from Bhirkot (the name of one station ahead then Jamune) due to bad road. You can take the bus from Old Bus Park (Ratnapark) in Kathmandu. The bus ticket should be previously bought and it costs about 5/6$ per person. Once you arrive in Jamune, the school’s hostel is about 200 meters up-hill.

What volunteers should do here?

As our goal is to support in education system of village – volunteers should be devoted on teaching kids in effective way.

Volunteers should teach the kids starting from kindergarten. As village is in the remote area, local teachers aren’t good enough in English. So, volunteers also should take a class for local teacher as per the schedule where you will be giving good teaching technique and creative teaching skills to teach kids – so that, later on, a local teacher is qualified enough and, confident and able to teach kids in effective way. Teaching local teacher will also help the community to go little ahead.

How volunteers take a class in school?

Usually, the volunteer doesn’t participate actively in the classes on the first day (it also depends on you). On first day, usually, volunteers introduce themselves to each others, to the students and to the school staff, get familiar with our schedule and daily routine, observe the environment, discuss about self-responsibilities, read the information left by other volunteers and generally make over the mind. In most cases, the volunteers start teaching by the second day.

The volunteers will take classes cooperating with the local teacher – the things that you might explain in english may not be understood completely by children, so, the local teacher will help the children to understand what are you exactly saying and translate it to nepali language. This will keep a good understanding and relationship between volunteer-teacher-children. And, when the teacher is absent or you can also be allowed to take classes on your own, or, anyway, teach something creative to the children and something that you would like to do.

The main language at the school is english – only nepali is taught in local language and the teacher should follow the books approved by the Ministry of Education.

The education system here is based on “teach and make student memorize”: – most of the Nepali teachers prefer the passive way of teaching (students read a text and repeat it like a choir; they usually answer questions by reading full paragraph from the book, which makes it difficult for them to extract the essence and give own answer) but volunteers should try to make this more active, communicative and dynamic.