Kindergarten Resource Kit
for Himalayan Buddhist Monastic schools
1. Helping teachers and children with toys and resources
Kindergartens should be warm, caring, stimulating, and fun for young children, with safe toys to help them play, explore, and learn to make sense of their world and their inner emotions. However, children in rural Nepal don't have easy access to that kind of resource. So they normally play only with basic tools available in their environment, as you can see in the pictures below:
To address this lack of resources, with your contribution we bring kindergarten handmade soft toys, wooden blocks and other resources into the remote kindergartens whose teachers are currently training with us, in order to support the teachers to implement all that they are learning.
![image1[1]_edited.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/0e33f9_1019324d61b246bc885c5a244a2b1de6~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_321,h_207,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/image1%5B1%5D_edited.jpg)
2. Helping families and the community
Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the pandemic has made life especially difficult for many people, as government assistance is extremely limited. Vaccines are not yet widely available and the only way to control the spread of Covid is with a very strict curfew.
In order to help those around us who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic, we are working to train and employ people in the community with woodwork, knitting and sewing skills to make toys to offer to monastic kindergartens. This employment will ensure they can continue to support themselves and their families.
In order to help those around us who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic, we are working to train and employ people in the community with woodwork, knitting and sewing skills to make toys to offer to monastic kindergartens. This employment will ensure they can continue to support themselves and their families.
3. Helping rural monastery schools
The people of the High Himalayas are subsistence farmers, which means long hard days of working in the fields, tending to the farm animals and gathering wood to be able to survive.
In the remote High Himalayas, not all villages have a school near enough to make the journey possible for younger children, so some of the farmers’ children are sent as boarders from as young as four years old to rural monastery schools.
It is hard enough for a young child to be away from home for very long periods, but the conditions in the rural monasteries are extremely basic, with little or nothing in terms of toys and learning resources.
The locally-made toys and resources we can offer to the monastery schools will help improve the children’s education and quality of life, and the monastic teachers (most of whom have already joined our teacher training) will have the resources to teach the children using the Abiding Heart approach.
How your donations will be spent
We are seeking funds to equip seven kindergartens with a full kindergarten resources kit. This will also give employment to skilled people who have lost their jobs. We have already trained some of the people to make these toys.
The cost for one kindergarten kit which includes giving employment to 5 people who will make and prepare these kits is $5,000 USD.
Rent for store room/wood workshop to make and store the toys. The cost for renting such a room is $30 USD a month.
You can also help us by donating any amount through our Go Fund Me campaign.
Supporting Serdang Monastery, Nubri Velley, Gorkha District
The resources have been packed in big white sacks and transported to the monastic school by helicopter chartered by the monastery.
One of the teachers from Serdang Monastery, Dolma Lama, spent two months training at Abiding Heart Education centre in Kathmandu. She will teach the other teachers in the monastery how to use all these resources.
Below are some photos and videos of the children at Serdang Monastery engaging with the some of the resources.
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May these resources be of benefit to these children and our deepest gratitude to all that made this project possible.
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If you need further information, please contact our Administration Coordinator at administration@abidingheart.education.