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POOR CONDITIONS IN NEPAL: Nepal provides insufficient services to their people, and so it is Rollins' duty to do something about it.

Nepal Trip is Booked!

By: Peter Travis

Posted: 3/19/10

Rollins College students have a long history of participation in charitable missions around the Winter Park community and abroad on the international level. This summer Rollins will once again expand its horizons of philanthropy by sending a group of students to Nepal.

Aditya Mahara (Class of 2012) came to Rollins last year and saw a need as well as an opportunity. He saw the need to do something about the inequalities within the education system and healthcare standards among the populations of underprivileged regions of the Asian nation and his home country, Nepal.

Luckily, and more importantly, Mahara saw the opportunity to dedicate the time, passion and resources found in the Rollins student body to Nepal where there could help be part of a solution to the severe poverty facing the nation. So Mahara decided to propose a new international program that would give students the chance to travel to his home country and give first-hand aid to those in need.

"This came about my first semester freshmen year. I did stuff like this in rural areas, so I just thought we could do this with Rollins students on a really broad international level," said Mahara.

To achieve his goal, he came up with an eight-page proposal for a joint initiative with the Sagarmatha Health Foundation, a non-profit organization established by a group of medical professionals who aim to provide good health services to the poor Nepalese living in the rural areas of Nepal. This international mission would aim to be what is being called a "Quick Win Project." This project "will aim to provide basic health care services in conjunction with educational material distribution and education for women, children and communities about HIV and AIDS," as quoted from the organizations website.

Mapsofworld.com has information of not only all the countries of the world but also their political, social and economic information, and they identify Nepal's healthcare system as lacking "absent of primary health care centers," having "very few good and qualified doctors [who are] not efficiently trained and qualified" as well as Nepal having a "lack of modern and technologically advanced equipments" to work with.

The site also looks at the system of education in Nepal: "[it] has only recently started to develop. Nepal education has suffered a lot during Rana Regime here when education was suppressed and after that education was given to aristocratic people of the society." Today it resembles the structure of the United States education system, but needs more improvement.

The first groups of Rollins students embarking on this new international program will be focusing their efforts in the Doti District, a very hilly region of Nepal with a population of over 237,000.

The objective of the trip is as follows: "to ensure the immediate health services to about 2000 women and children, men, and adolescents in the Doti district and to provide basic and life saving service, emergency obstetric first aid, family planning, screening, counseling and referrals for GBV and voluntary testing and counseling for HIV/AIDS and STI's through essential health camps."

After a long process of research and lobbying, Rollins has given the go-ahead to Mahara. And with the summer soon aproaching, the eleven students and two faculty members are getting excited for their journey, which begins July 24. When asked what the most pressing issue facing Nepal is, Mahara replied, "Corruption. Lawlessness is the cause of poverty, lack of education, and everything else." Mahara hopes that this will be the first of many trips to Nepal and that interest in the program will increase each year.