Promoting sustainability

teaching the students

As Volunteachers, we want to take responsibility for our actions. Therefore, sustainable volunteering, eco-friendly travelling and sustainability as lesson content are part of our philosophy.

Sustainable volunteering

Volunteering is sustainable if your work continues to have an effect after your volunteering time is up. Our goal is to promote and provide support, which focuses on the exchange of knowledge. This knowledge remains at the supported schools and has an impact even if the volunteer is no longer present.

Exchanging knowledge with the teachers

As a Volunteacher, you teach together with the local English teacher(s) in tandem. By working closely together an exchange about methods and teaching ideas takes place. This broadened experience can improve the English lessons at the host school longterm. Learn more

Initiating projects

Starting projects which have the potential to continue without volunteers is another way to promote sustainable change. A few examples would be pen-friendships (online), English theater groups, sports activities, reading clubs, etc.

Spread the word

Tell family, friends and fellow students about Volunteachers. The project is most beneficial for the schools if there is continuous support from motivated and skilled volunteers. If you cannot volunteer yourself, donations are highly appreciated. Donations are used to support future volunteers financially and to buy needed materials for the schools.

Donating school material

You might come to realize that some students do not have a pen or paper or that other essential teaching materials are missing. Organizing these materials is a possibility to support students and teachers in a sustainable manner. Please keep in mind that your primary focus is to share your knowledge not to donate money to the schools. If you are interested in supporting the schools with more than your expertise, you can do so. Our tip is to buy the material you realize is missing yourself and distribute it to the students instead of handing over money. In general pens, exercise books and dictionaries are a good idea. You will be rewarded with smiling faces and can be sure your help reached those in need.

Please inform the Volunteachers team about planned donations to the school. This helps us to keep an overview and we can tell you if donations are already on their way. Furthermore, we can inform future volunteers about previous donations.

Sustainability as lesson content

Acting in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner is only possible if we know about the consequences of our actions. Therefore, we believe that education about environmental issues is essential to enable change.

Nepal contributes only a small share of human-made climate change and other environmental problems compared to most other countries. Nonetheless, the country faces environmental challenges like the pollution of water and air and the lack of a working waste disposal system.

Making human contribution to climate change as well as environmental friendly behavior in everyday life part of your lessons is vital. The most prominent issue in many parts of Nepal is the pollution of the landscape through plastic waste. By drawing attention to this problem in your lesson content, showing alternative behavior and initiating projects, the reduction of plastic waste can be encouraged.

Volunteachers goal is not to judge the lack of a waste disposal system or similar problems but rather to educate, to inform and to sensitize.

By integrating environmental issues into the educational system, we hope to contribute to the awareness of those issues and to provide the basis for environmentally friendly behavior.

A few ideas for environmental projects:

  • educating about climate change (melting glaciers and consequences for Nepal’s water supply in the next decades, the importance of forest and jungles, etc.)
  • educating about the water cycle (especially concerning waste in streams, rivers and oceans)
  • Upcycling collected garbage in the schoolyard
  • Making reusable shopping bags
  • Making garbage bins
  • Recycling projects
  • Informing about the half-life of different materials and their impact -> consequences for farming, animals and wildlife

Feel free to come up with your own ideas and share them in the material section, so everyone can benefit and contribute to making this world a bit more sustainable.

Environmental friendly traveling:

We do not want to ask you to postulate the one thing and do the other. As a Volunteacher, you probably take the plane to reach your destination, which is anything but environmentally-friendly (consider atmosfair). We, therefore, ask you to make up your mind on how to act as sustainably as possible during your volunteering time (and hopefully, the rest of your life). As conditions might vary largely from what you are used to, we have compiled a guide to help you out. One of the main issues is the lack of a garbage system. The goal, therefore, is to produce as little garbage as possible. A wisely packed suitcase saves you from producing waste which ends up in the river or countryside. Please contact us for our tips for environmentally friendly traveling.