STUDENT teachers have been given the chance of a life time, to teach in Nepal and help empower other students and teachers.
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Charles Sturt University second and third year teaching students will go to Nepal in November and as well as educating others, will be using the experience as a learning curve themselves.
The international program has been 12 months in the making and a joint initiative with the Mitrataa Foundation.
The Mitrataa Foundation was set up by Bathurst couple Adam and Bec Ordish 12 years ago as they lived in Nepal and ever since then they have been committed to making life better for children in Nepal by empowering women and girls through education and training.
CSU Vice Chancellor Andrew Vann signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Mitrataa Foundation yesterday and CSU lecturer Trisha Poole hopes this will be the start of an annual exercise.
“Thirteen students are heading to Nepal for four weeks as part of their teaching degree,” Ms Poole said.
“It is extremely exciting, for the students to be able to do part of their university degree in another country and gain the life experience as well is just fantastic.
“The students will be teaching Nepal teachers as well as learning for themselves.
“This experience will let the students see what kind of teachers they want to be.”
Ms Ordish is so excited by the MoU and the potential this has.
“The Mitrataa Foundation means friendship and networking, joining up with CSU is an amazing networking opportunity for both the Foundation and the students,” she said.
“For us, it is not about fixing what is broken, we have taken the positive approach and building on what is working.
“When we lived in Nepal it was amazing to see how resilient the children were and we wanted to build on that.”
Bec and Adam started out sponsoring a few children, and then it grew into starting a Foundation and now the two are managing an orphanage with 200 children.
“We didn’t set out to be this big, but it has just keep growing,” Bec said.
“We raise all the money ourselves and rely on sponsorship. Essentially what we want to do is do ourselves out of a job, we want to create sustainable systems.
As well as running the Foundation, Bec and Adam own Chai Wallah Cafe and give 10 per cent of the proceeds to the Foundation.
