On 7th April 2019 I'm going to be running the Greater Manchester Marathon to raise money for local development projects in Ghandruk region of Nepal, and to give something back to the community who took me in as family for 5 months last year while I was living there as a volunteer.

Ghandruk is a poor area sitting high in the Annapurna mountains, a full day's bus journey away from the closest hospitals, major banks, and government offices. The people there are already planning a variety of innovative projects to make the community safer and give its people a wider variety of opportunities, and any money raised will go through the friends I made there to make these wonderful ideas a reality. Five of these are:

1) Investing in hiring fully-trained Nepalese teachers to permanently staff the local schools. This plan is particularly important to me: during my time teaching at Shree Janapremi Elementary School I saw first-hand how keen to learn the children of this community are and how seriously they are being failed by a critical shortage of staff, to the extent that at any given time multiple classes would be left in a classroom without a teacher. Much more so than volunteers with little experience appearing and disappearing within a few months the children really deserve the consistent long-term presence of a teacher who can fully communicate with them and help them develop their passion and hard work into bright futures.

2) Building and staffing a local medical post so basic health-care is immediately accessible without a long, expensive journey.

3) Building and maintaining safe roads and clean water pipes so that food grown in other parts of the country can be brought up with less and expense and the community doesn't have to worry about the ready availability of drinkable water.

4) Finally rebuilding structures destroyed by the 2015 earthquake and educating the community in building techniques so that next time far less houses will collapse and there never has to be repeat of the tragic and senseless death of 2015.

5) Conducting scientific tests and surveys on the local farmland to figure out how to make the most from their limited resources.

(There are plenty more projects underway so if you're interested feel free to contact me!)

The 5 months I spent living in Nepal was the most testing, revealing and meaningful period of my life so far, and I definitely wouldn't have been able to take as much positive understanding from it without being constantly inspired by the bravery and kindness of the friends and family I found there. After having seen these extraordinary people make so much from the most difficult of circumstances I know that any money raised will be used innovatively and carefully to build a brighter, fairer future for everyone living there.

Thank you :)