Currently, all the schools are shut down due to Covid-19 outbreak. But despite of this ongoing pandemic situation, Kehi Garoun along with the circle of government school teachers conducted Stationery Campaign 2020 to provide stationery materials to students. They saw the need of stationery to encourage and motivate their students to study.
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Our target was to reach 700 students from 10 Government schools , out of which we have delivered stationery to 490 students from 7 schools already. Other 3 schools will be receiving stationery after the Dashain vacation. For details go through this link. 
Finally we would like to thank our donor community for donating for this campaign and the teachers community for supporting and coordinating the whole campaign. We hope this small act to bring about some change and motivate students to study.  ​

As we are going through this hard times of pandemic and many things are uncertain. When and how will the schools resume is a big question. Therefor we have created an online sheet that has important links of educational contents, training materials and platforms that teachers and students can use at this time siting inside their home. We know that most of the students might not have access to internet but still it would be a very useful thing  to those who can access these materials and try to  engage and learn. 
This is a simple effort to help teachers and students to be in touch with their teaching and studying habits.  If you have  some online contents or links that might be useful to teachers and students. We request you to share them with us in this Google form. 
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Kehi Garoun in coordination with OLE Nepal organised a 2 day orientation session for government school teachers on E-Pustakalaya and E-path. These platforms provides online curriculum and other educational contents in different froms like E-books, audio/video, links etc for teachers, students and community in large. 
This 2 day session was held successfully with more than 20 participating teachers and 4 facilitators from OLE Nepal. The session was a result of an idea expressed by teachers to do something worthwhile regarding  education in this uncertain time of pandemic. The idea was to introduce above mentioned platforms to teachers so that they will be able to get some sense of it and take it to their students and give them something fruitful to engage. 
We, would like to thank OLE Nepal for conducting this orientation session for our  teachers, and we also thank all the participating teachers for making their time for the session. It was very nice to see your positive feedback on the survey form. We hope to collaborate and organize more such sessions in future too.  

​On the occasion of world Women’s Day, Kehi Garoun successfully organized an event called KG Circle Picnic. 13 people including 7 teachers from different government schools and 5 members/volunteers from Kehi Garoun planned a picnic at Dukuchhap, a beautiful village situated at Lalitpur.
This picnic was unlike any normal picnic. It was more like an interactive field trip. Getting closer to the nature listening to the sound of stream and birds, seeing new faces, interacting and building relationships, the picnic was a whole new experience for all the participants.
In addition we had a privilege to visit one of the Governments run school of the village named Ganesh Secondary School and interacted with principle and different personals of that school.
 As expressed by the participants, this picnic was a new and very refreshing event for all and they want such events to be organized in future too.
Thank you to all the people who made this event possible. 

KG Annual General Meeting was successfully held on 14th Dec 2019 at one of our networking school, Bal Bikash Basic School, Dhalkho.  Some pictures from the event. 

This winter 2019 Sweater campaign supported 439 students from 10 government schools. 
The total budget of the campaign was NRs. 145,750. Till now we have only been able to raise
NRs. 60,721. So if you wish to support us to raise the deficit fund please donate here. 
To know more about the campaign go through this link.
More pictures.

The sweater campaign 2018/19 was successfully completed by 30th of November, 2018.
KG Circle of teachers played an active role from identifying students to purchasing sweaters and distributing it to the finalized students. In total we were able to help all 415 students in need from 10 schools. The happy faces of students after getting the sweater were very pleasant to watch.
However we are still raising fund for this campaign because we have not managed to raise the total fund yet. Till now we have only raised NRs. 48,750 out of NRs. 145,250. We are in a huge deficit of NRs. 96,500. Interested people can support us by helping us to raise the remaining fund. 

We conducted a day long retreat from 11am to 4:30pm, with KG Circle of Educators from 7 schools.  The retreat was conducted very lightly with mindfulness activities, meditation, movement activities and sharing. We also had a good conversation on the strategy of educator circle, its role and values. We drafted the strategy for the next quarter on how to empower the circle activities work.

We conducted an Empathy workshop with peoples officers at cloud factory. There were 2 groups and each groups went through three different sessions
1. Empathy 
2. Mindfulness and
3. Communication.
Overall the feedback from the participants were very positive and they have shown interest to join our activities in the future as well. 

We conducted 28 community events for elderly citizens who are looking for a social engagement but haven't found that space and opportunity. So we designed Hamarapalama as their way to be social and have conversations on topics of their interests.  Most of the topics were of historical and cultural nature, that they referred to as "Satsang".  A speaker would speak on a certain topic and the audience could also give their viewpoint on the topic. We would especially like to thank  "Maheshwor juju Rajopadhya" for being such a wonderful speaker of the event. We also like to thank Bishnu Pandey, Ishor Raj Lohani, Ram Krishna Tamrakar, Kamal Nath Mishra for the continuous participation.

After the tiring school day teachers from John Dewy school, Balwatar were ready to experience the very first Empathy session. Around 25 teachers participated the session. Everyone was engaging equally. It was very heartwarming to see participants becoming more confident to trust the group and share their emotions. All of them said that this was different and very nice experience for them regarding other usual training sessions they use to have. The overall feedback from the participants was very positive. 
 

Empathy Workshop 2018 was held at a beautiful and peaceful space at Gairidhara. Many thanks to Accountability Lab for providing us the space and facilities. The workshop was successfully held with 22 participants including 7 children. There was separate engagements for adults and children. Basically the event focused on actionable practices of Mindfulness and Emotional Intelligence which could be an important tools for seeding the culture of Empathy in home, schools, workplace and community. Overall the feedback from participants were so positive and they are also interested for upcoming events. It was a great experience to have people from mixed backgrounds. We are looking forward for organizing more such events in coming future. Any one who is interested can join.  

Empathy session held at Tashi Waldorf school. The whole session was based on mindfulness and emotional intelligence which brought about a flow of positive vibes and deep sense of connection. Thank you for giving us this opportunity. ​​

The U.S embassy's  Book Bus conducted the 3rd edition of Innovation in education fair from 16th Aug 2018 to 25th Aug 2018. Different workshops were held on the theme of STEAM Education, Arts Education, Visual arts, Outdoor learning, Emotional Intelligence, and many other innovations in education. We also participated as an observer where we observed some of the workshops that were relevant to our work. At the exhibition day 25th Aug, we setup a stall in the hall along with other organizations like Karkhana, Sunsar Maya, The Asia Foundation, Canopy Nepal etc. We displayed our work and spoke to the participants who were interested to know about us and our work. The participation was good though it was raining during the day. It felt great to be appreciated by the participation for the kind of work we are doing on the theme of Empathy. Over all the Fair was a good experience and a platform for us to reach out to teachers, students and parents and give them the sense of Empathy and its importance in school. workplace and community at large. 

Toast master is a platform for individuals to develop their communication and leadership skills. The team of Kehi Garoun actively participated in one of the club's meeting organised by Kathmandu Toast Masters. It was very nice to watch how people were learning to speak in public and develop their communication skills. Also leaders were in the process of learning while they were the one who were hosting the event. It was an open where we would be judged in our skills from different angels like, body language, grammar, throw of voice etc, but still the group would be so open to that. The meeting was fun too because it had that sense of humor too.  The meeting was worth attending. ​

Being a facilitator, when we see children changing their behaviors towards empathy is a beautiful feeling. Identifying own problem, exploring and interacting with others to better understand the situation, finding solutions with validating other’s views, and coordinating well to execute the solutions is what students go through. As a result we have experienced that even a reserved and afraid child has become ready to initiate conversation in our sessions.
 
There are more important things that we have seen through students that we have worked with on E-DFC. They are as follows:-

1. Seeing from others’ perspectives
2. Validating others’ world view, exploring and debating
3. Sense of acceptance
4. Understanding problems from multiple perspectives
5. Designing user centric solutions
6. Self-awareness
7. Collaborative direction/space, not compelled by ego
8. Project planning and execution
9. Initiating conversations
10. Sense of appreciation
11. Sense of confidence
12. Iterative learning
13. Acting out of personal courage
14. Creativity, expressed creativity
15. Self-initial research
16. Social ease/gender

"...the research evidence keeps piling up, and it points strongly to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent and certainly one of the most potent factors in bringing about change and learning."  Carl Rogers
An empathy circle is a space to explore on the theme of empathy. The objective of this circle is to cultivate a culture of empathy within the community.  It tends to nurture and deepen empathy with ourselves and others. Deeper empathy has many benefits Such as:-

1. It fosters learning, connection, social change, supports sustainable collaborative action, transforms conflict, it fosters resilience, as well as builds trust and heals.
2. It helps to deepen our empathic listening skills.
3. We will be able to find more clarity and deeper understanding of our feelings and needs.
4. We will be able to explore and share with openness and curiosity.

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1. To understand a complex world (full here)
“The ability to understand what someone is feeling” – that’s the textbook definition of empathy.  But when put into practice, empathy means a whole lot more.  It means the ability to grasp the many sides of today’s complex problems and the capacity to collaborate with others to solve them; it means being as good at listening to the ideas of others as articulating your own; it means being able to lead a team one day, and participate as a team member the next...What’s more important is that you can take the perspective of others – whether you’re designing a new technology, or negotiating, or anticipating the uncertain. Indeed, how well we do — whether in the classroom or the boardroom — depends more than ever on how well we forge and navigate relationships. In this way, empathy is the new literacy: essential for us to communicate, collaborate, and lead."

2. To design solutions to problems (full here)
"The core principles of design thinking are to empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Teaching design thinking can be a powerful way of teaching students empathy in that it teaches them how to solve another person’s problems by providing creative and innovative solutions that relate to his or her needs...Empathy is the first step in design thinking because it is a skill that allows us to understand and share the same feelings that others feel. Through empathy, we are able to put ourselves in other people's shoes and connect with how they might be feeling about their problem, circumstance, or situation. Some questions to consider:

Giving Circle is a group of teachers from government school, contributing their time and effort to bring about change in their community. In government schools many students are unable to afford the notebooks needed for their school work which often leads to dropouts of students. Therefore in this beginning of academic year the circle has identified the need of stationery for students.

It costs Rs 3,000 to provide notebooks needed for an academic year to 10 students.

                                                     You can be a helping hand. 

Experiencing moments of connection, disconnection and self realization Kehi Garoun held the 6th “Mindfulness” Retreat in Boudha,Kathmandu this weekend. The theme of the retreat was to explore the potential of the change that ripples from self to into the world which was so visible among 24 participants, the space and people around. There were 4 adorable kids as well, who made the retreat more play full and alive. We used the tools of mindfulness and interaction which somehow made an impact to every individual. The desire of the change from within which would ripple out through relationships and to the world seems possible now after having this retreat done. And there is more hope that things would fall in place and the world would be a better place, as we start to see ourselves and others as humans.  

Kehi Garoun team attended the training organized by the Waldorf Education Nepal regarding the theme of Children Development. This training was led by an amazing tutor from Israel. The training was held at one of the Waldorf's school situated at Bansbari, Chakrapath from 15th April to 20th April.  We got a sense of understanding a child's world and how he/she behaves and their development. Focusing on grade 1-5, the whole session was about preparing teachers to better engage with children and facilitate them to go on their beautiful journey from their pictorial, imaginative space to the real world where they need to be aware of themselves and many things around them. This training was a great experience and very very impact-full.