In 2009, Saran and Christina from Hi On Life Adventures trekked to the village of Thade to visit the porters who worked for their company. They wanted to “give something back” to the guys who worked so hard for them, and always with big smiles! Saran and Christina were overwhelmed with the beautiful sceneries of the village and the warm hospitability of the people. They also found out that the children of this village had practically no school to go to, until they were old enough to walk 2 hours to a “nearby” village. The existing government school, looking like the deteriorating remains of a shabby house, was more or less not in use, since it was great dificulties to get teachers to a school like that. Some families sent their children to realtives in Kathmandu so that they could go to school. Saran and Christina realized that making a new school in Thade would be a great way to help the village. And so – the Thade School Project was founded!
After 4 years of hard work, the project still needed a lot of money if a new school was going to be built. One of the participants on a Hi On Life trek, Heidi Ek, heard about the project and instantly became interested to join the “dream”. Heidi approach Volvo for sponsorship and they agreed to sponsor the new school building! Volvo has been the major donor and has financed most of the school building operation, but the school also have a smaller companies sponsoring, as well as a lot of individual sponsors!
The school was completed in April 2015 and was named Grace Academy Thade. New classes started from May 2015. The first year the school had 45 children in 4 classes, out of which 28 students were from other villages, taking the benefit of quality education provided by our school.
Volunteer programs
The school aims to promote the best possible academic, cultural and moral values in a gender equality environment. All the children, regardless of background, culture, gender, religious belief or ability, will be equally valued, supported and challenged.
We also have volunteer teachers facilities on our school and in the first 18 months running of the school, we have had 6 volunteer teachers from Sweden. This has benefited the school beyond expectation. We are having more volunteer teacher’s programs this year and we already have 3 teachers (2 from Norway and 1 from UK) who has booked the program. If you are interested to teach in our school as a volunteer teacher, please don’t hesitate to contact us!