Angel's Heavenly Choir - Video - Part 2

The following is the second part — in the night — of the Angel's Heavenly Choir performance at Kathmandu Durbar Square. 10 minutes at YouTube.

People who made all this possible:

Orphanage staff and volunteers

Orphanage parents: Amrit Bikram Shahi (St. Angel) and his wife Aishvarya, who bear the loving responsibility for the children since 1999.

Administrator and Coordinator: Kim Morton, United Kingdom, living at the orphanage as a resident volunteer.

Website, artwork and marketing: Ananda Loponen, Finland, working with the Universal Peace Foundation.
Website, painting, help with children: Manue, France, also with the UPF.

Filming, art with children: Claire and Tom, Australia.
Filming and editing: Raina, Austria, working on a wonderful DVD of the event and the orphanage.

Artwork and promotion: Bashkor and Shani, Bangladesh, sketched together excellent illustrations.
Resident volunteer: Emily, France, helped with the children.
English teacher: Jimpa, Tibet, is teaching the children.
Financial support: Craig and John, South Africa, donated the event banner and food for the children.
Organizing the children: Shiva and Prakash, Nepal.

Performers

Fire dance and music: Masa and Rio.
Juggling and entertainment: Alex and friends, France.
Didgeridoo and djembe: Bikash and Binod, Nepal.
Singing and drums: Bashu and friends, Nepal.

A big thank you to everyone involved! Thanks to your untiring efforts, the orphanage has now been put on the map of Kathmandu!

Angel's Heavenly Choir - Video - Part 1

The following is the first part — in the daylight — of the Angel's Heavenly Choir performance at Kathmandu Durbar Square. 10 minutes at YouTube.



And here's a link to the YouTube page, too.

Angel Apple

Yesterday's event with St. Angel's Heavenly Choir was a grand success! Featuring a program with the children and their songs, followed by fire-dancers, jugglers and musicians, the total flow of people attending the event was close to a thousand.

A blazing success with a mere four days of active work and two days of advertising, the event with good media presence was a wonderful pilot for raising awareness on the orphanage. Detailed news with photos and videos will be made available momentarily.

A huge thank you to everyone participating in spirit and on the spot — it was wonderful! We love you, folks!

Help promote the event!

Please participate in promoting the July 26th event featured below! Contact your friends, send a note to your contacts! Promotional materials are available at www.stangelsheaven.com.

Currently happening:

• Faxing press release to all major newspapers and TV-stations
• Printing posters and fliers - distributing in central locations

We could use a swift hand or two in passing out fliers around Thamel and Freak Street — get in touch, drop by at the UPF office or the orphanage!

Charity concert - Press release

St. Angel’s Heavenly Choir

A charity concert in the heart of Kathmandu

• Saturday, July 26th •
6.00 - 8.00 pm

at Kathmandu Durbar Square

Angel’s Heaven Orphanage
Angel’s Heaven is a child care home formed in 1999, working towards giving homeless and orphan children an opportunity for a safe life and a good future. The organization is committed to helping children who are socially neglected and rejected in the society.

The organization, registered in 1999 by Mr. Amrit Bikram Shahi and his wife with a board of seven members, is a non-profit, non-political, independent organization with a vision to serve disadvantaged children by providing basic necessities and globally recognized education.

Currently caring for 27 children, year 2008 has been a transition towards a bright future for the orphanage. With increasing volunteer activity and international support, plans are in progress to relocate the orphanage to the scenic mountain valleys of Dhading, to land owned by Mr. Shahi.


A Charity Concert
Music is an integral part of the lives of the children at the Angel’s Heaven orphanage. With an aim for creating awareness of the orphanage and the overall humanitarian needs of Nepal, the children of the orphanage will be performing traditional Nepali songs along with other classic songs in a free charity concert at Kathmandu Durbar Square on Saturday, the 26th July, from 6.00 to 8.00 pm.

Aside the children’s performance, the event will feature a session with Japanese fire dancers, a blend of tribal sounds and mountain magic by a Nepalese didgeridoo master, and additional short numbers by other partners and of the Angel’s Heaven orphanage.


Contact Information
For further information, please contact Mr. Amrit Bikram Shahi, the director of the orphanage. A press kit with logos, photos and background information is available on the website.

Mr. Amrit Bikram Shahi
Child at Risk Rescue & Care Foundation (CRRCF)
P.O. Box: 8975 EPC-1104, Kathmandu, Nepal

Mobile: 98510-26344
E-Mail: st_angels@hotmail.com
Website: www.stangelsheaven.com

St. Angel's Heavenly Choir

Here's a cordial invitation to all friends and fellow travelers in or around Kathmandu on Saturday, July 26th!

Angel's Children

A common view from the rooftop room at Amrit's orphanage... The children running criss-cross his room, playing and singing songs, rejoicing life in the company of a loving father they were once deprived of.

Dhading Valley - Photos

After a week at Dhading, living in a mountain-locked beautiful, pristine valley at 2000 meters of altitude, I'm back to KTM for two days. This is where Amrit has his land, where he wants to establish the orphanage once the required funds (min. 10.000 euro) have been raised. More to follow in a bit, here's a link to a set of photos from the place.

Much more online at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/universalshanti/sets/72157606200328247/

UPG2010 website preview

A preview of the Universal Peace Gathering 2010 website is now online at http://upg2010.info. The texts, sans the front page (that is now identical with "intro") and the staff profiles at the contact page, are pretty much in their final shape.

While the design is also near-final, inline images need to be added to each subsection of the site. This will be happening in the next two to three days, I'm waiting for a batch of images to be sorted out... Our archives are vast and chaotic!

A slightly modified variant of the above theme will also be rolled out on the main site. More on that as I get the informations I need together, especially project data.

Once finalized, promotion begins. =)

Reporting and personnel issues

A number of management and work environment evolutions are called for, are we to accomplish our aims to any substantial degree. Here are a few basic elements that need to be put into place, drawing from a discussion with Suraj and Shiva last night.

Project sheet

Project details are in as many locations as project directors and volunteers. They need to exist in a central location and be easily accessible for all. Required: A project sheet detailing times, locations, activities and finances should be submitted for each UPF project. Monthly update sheets.

Personnel sheet

Who are the people working in our diverse projects? Where are they, where is their contact info, what are their skills, what are they engaged in, what are their needs? Each member of UPF should submit a personnel sheet and provide monthly updates. Active workers should submit weekly progress reports.

Personnel trustee

We need be a personnel trustee with whom UPF workers can confidentially discuss their situation and any possible grievances or problems, aiding the worker and his peers reach constructive resolutions for work environment conflicts. Issues just can't stay brewing until they explode.

Anonymous feedback

As an extension of the personnel trustee's function, there should be an anonymous medium for giving necessary feedback that one may feel uneasy over being linked to oneself. Web based, directed to personnel trustee who assesses the feedback and seeks avenues for resolving the issues.

And still more food...

As per the plan yesterday, Kiran brought the children at Angel's Heaven orphanage 100+ kilos of raw ingredients to ensure their most essential necessity — food — at a time of financial crisis. Hopefully this is the first in a series of recurring support from the UPF. I can't see why that wouldn't be possible.

There are also plans in the UPF to generate financial support for the remaining children of the orphanage who are yet to be admitted to school. I'm very pleased to see how the hearts of the movers here are touched by the children's needs.

Instruments for the Children

Kiran Dai just checked in and told me he had sent a bunch of instruments for the poor children at Maidi area, where Amrit has some land, and where the UPF has future plans of development.

The instruments sent are:

3 murchungas
2 basuri bamboo flutes
1 madal drum
1 djambe

And two photos...

Central Roles in UPF Operations

The workflow of the UPF office needs to be streamlined. Certain key figures need to be identified and established to ensure smooth working conditions for everyone.

The following is obviously an incomplete list of people who need to be in the right place, but nonetheless it's a start. The following people need to be based in Nepal long-term, as their presence and availability is crucial. Being an international project, they should form cordial peer relationships with competent foreigners who may not be able to extend their longtime on-field presence to the extent required.

Communication Coordinator
Communication Coordinator is the person who keeps tabs on all contacts, who ensures all substantial contact situations are reported and filed, who has read every incoming file and knows how to link together disjoint resources, for whom people can turn with any personnel resource related issues.

Communication Assistant
The second-in-line from the Communication Coordinator, the Communication Assistant, is the person taking care of most incoming correspondence, replying or forwarding as necessary, along with a number of other communication related errands. The assistant should be able to keep things running stable in the coordinator's absence.

Project Coordinator
Project Coordinator is the person who keeps track of all ongoing projects, cooperating with project department heads. All project proposals and ongoing projects are reported and filed with him.

Project Assistant
The second-in-line from the Project Coordinator, the Project Assistant, is the person taking care of most project coordination related errands. The assistant should be able to keep things running stable in the coordinator's absence.

Fund-raising Coordinator
Fund-raising Coordinator is the person responsible for overseeing ongoing financial programs and exploring future funding avenues. Works closely with Communication Coordinator. As with the other roles above, Fund-raising Assistant is also good to have in place.

Caretaker
Caretaker is the person to whom personnel can turn to with grievances — in confidence. Problems and conflicts are inevitable, and need to be resolved. Caretaker is a neutral party involved in conflict resolution and other interpersonal problems.

President, Vice-president, General secretary and Treasurer are obviously roles that don't need that much explaining — though we may need to revisit these, too, to be clear on who's supposed to be doing what, and when, and where.

Department heads will obviously need to be established once the projects grow more. However, with the current scale of resources and activities, I think we're running on just fine letting people who manage their own field projects just run with it as they've been doing — with added backup from a streamlined office, base of operations. We only really need to start talking about department heads when we have enough people for different fields to actually form a department!

Operation roles must be clearly defined with all of their responsibilities. Only in an atmosphere of flowing, dynamic clarity can projects like this reach their full potential — and we'd very much like to see the UPF potential come to its fullest bloom.

But we don't want big, inflated ego-heads floating around the office, okay? It's just a job that needs to be done, it's here today and gone tomorrow, and the only thing we'll accomplish with ego trips is hampering the potentials at our disposal.

Marketing UPF Products

The UPF has a bunch of good products already — yoga mats, bags, t-shirts, instruments and so on — with a few more coming up in the near future, starting with a charity CD and some bamboo handicraft. These all need to be marketed, they generate nothing by lying around in the office.

As the first step, we need to put together a UPF Product Sheet or brochure detailing all available items. The next step is establishing local outlets across Kathmandu. Nepal has a constant flow of tourists, and our products are definitely within the mainstream interest.

We also need to become affiliated with friendly businesses (Lungta Music, Grasshopper Tattoo Studio, Nozomi Treks etc.) and establish a fair commission-program for customers received via UPF. I'd also like to see "natural benefit" programs with affiliated businesses for committed volunteers.

A friend suggested a two-tier approach to sales. The first one is the "ashram" mode, where people take a small quantity of products for production cost and contributes from the profits as he pleases / if he so pleases. The second one is a more business-oriented model with fixed for-profit wholesale prices for larger quantities. Sounds fine to me.

Solid sources and a good spread of micro-funding needs to be established to ensure our ongoing programs remain well funded and are steadily developed. Our products are one such potential source, a source that needs to be exploited.

Presentation Strategy

There is a need for developing uniform and effective presentation strategies to ensure that the potential in our contacts is maximized. We cannot afford wasting potentials at a project with as large a scale as the Universal Peace Foundation / Gathering.

Contemplate on the following three points.

• Uniform Presentation
  UPF staff and volunteers involved with communications need to internalize a uniform, wholesome presentation of our activities to ensure our profile and activities are properly presented.
• Profiled Presentations
  Identifying key target groups, unique presentations need to be drafted, varying in emphases and medium to feed the curiosity and confidence of the audience.
• Mini-seminars
  Education for the UPF staff on three core fields of communication:
  a) General communication: Making effective presentations — maximizing the effect of the available resources.
  b) Psychology: Reading the reactions of the target person, improvised adjustments to presentations.
  c) Follow-up: Ensuring that the communication effort leads to further future contacts and subsequent engagement.

The issue is currently brewing; expect to hear more on this vital issue in a week or thereabouts.

Universal Peace Flow

The Universal Peace Flow is primarily directed to people working with the Universal Peace Foundation in one capacity or another. The objective of the blog is to be a tool of communication to let everyone review and give feedback on stuff that's brewing at the backstage — usually within 10 meter radius of my desk.

The bulk of what appears here are seminal concepts, often at a very raw stage, that are thrown out in the open for maturing. There is an incredible lot going on, and we need to develop the concepts together to first of all ensure their balanced evolution, and perhaps even more importantly to ensure our own symmetric and synergetic growth.

This is not a private blog. It's open for all to read and study. We need feedback from the universe.

57 kilos of food

As of late, I've been spending a good deal of my time working with the Angel's Heaven orphanage in the neighborhood, near the Kathmandu Durbar Square. Run by Amrit and his wife Aishwarya, this orphanage of 20 beautiful children is badly in want of support.

A friend spotted me the other day at a wholesale grocery store near the Universal Peace Foundation office — I spent away the last 2500 NRS I had to get the children food for the upcoming days. 30 kilos of rice, 10 kilos of flat rice, 5 kilos of mung dal, sugar and oil respectively, and a kilo of tea and mixed beans each, and at the crux of time — Amrit has a trekking office, but the season is now at rock bottom, owing both to weather and the current political situation in Nepal.

Some friends, inspired by the example, have chosen to hop onboard and do the same. The children need an average of 12 kilos of rice and 1 kilo of dal per day, in addition with some vegetables. Much is in plans for providing steady future sustenance for this small but beautiful and very meaningful project.

We've been painting at the orphanage also. This old guest house, now rented for the orphanage, is in need of renovation to provide for an inspiring environment for the little angels. Manue and Bikash have been lending their artist's hand to fill the walls with flowers, vines, fruits and other beauties of nature. The top floor roof needs repairs to get past the ongoing monsoon season, and a new 2000 liter water tank also needs to be purchased.

Much is to be done, then! I got a draft of the website today — thanks Manue! — and it should go online momentarily with more specifics on the running expenses and development prospects for the orphanage.

Anyone touched by the prospect is cordially welcome to contribute — in however small and grand way — to the cause. To give an example, 12 kilos of rice costs 850 NRS (8.50e) — here even little goes a long way! I will be posting more details in the days to come. In the meantime, feel free to get in touch with me if the above sparks an interest.

Angel's Heaven - Mission Statement

This is a copy of a recent proposal my friend Amrit, the director of the Angel's Heaven orphanage, handed over to me. Attached to it was a sheet with a breakdown of the annual expenses, which I'll be posting later.

Contributors can send donations through me by 1. Credit card, 2. PayPal, 3. Bank transfer (Finnish and Indian accounts), or 4. Western Union. Otherwise, visitors can give cash on visiting or contact Amrit for further details.

Angel’s Heaven Nepal

Child at Risk Rescue and Care Foundation — Since 1999

Govt. Regd.:
CR No. 5
CDO No. 1598
SWC No. 22728

Mailing address: Post Box No. 8975 EPC-1104
Tel: 470-0718
Mobile: 985-102-6344
E-mail: st_angels@hotmail.com

Mission Statement
Angel’s Heaven

Children at Risk, Rescue and Care Foundation

Nepal is an underdeveloped country with a total population of 25 million per capita income per year of USD 240. The total literacy rate is 28%.

Since 1996 Nepal is suffering from civil war. Due to this reason, orphans are increasing and a large number of population cannot afford education and health care for their children.

Angel’s Heaven is a child care home formed in 1999, working towards giving homeless and orphans an opportunity for a safe life and a good future. The organization is committed to help children who are socially neglected and rejected in the society. The orphanage is aimed towards providing an atmosphere full of love, respect and kindness towards each other.

Started with one child from eastern Nepal in 1999, by 2002 the organization was looking after 12 children. Currently with 20 children from the age group of 5-15, Angel’s Heaven emphasizes on providing proper education and better future for the children. We believe in raising the children in a manner so they grow up to be independent, great individuals.

Angel’s Heaven is a non-profit, non-political, independent organization with a vision to serve disadvantaged children by providing basic necessities and globally recognized education.

Angel’s Heaven is self-supported organization funded by its 7 members to their best ability in a country where 82 percent of the population is living in villages and mountains. This is a small attempt to obtain financial support to help us improve the current lifestyle and education support for our children. By your small help, we can save their lives.

Our mission is to provide safe, healthy and better life to under-privileged children from various parts of Nepal.

We urge you to support these needed children. Your support can help them become responsible individuals, creating a better tomorrow.

Few of the many ways you can support:

• You can sponsor food, clothing, and medical requirements for an individual child or for all the children.
• You can sponsor education for an individual child or a group
• You can provide charity funding for the orphanage for various activities assisting our children
• You can help by purchasing land or supporting in construction of accommodation/school
• You can volunteer to teach English or music to our children

Long term objectives:

• Angel’s Heaven aspires to use land owned by Mr. Amrit Bikram Shahi (St. Angel) to construct a larger, permanent facility where more children can be accommodated.
• The next priority is a school where we can educate all our children and also assist the poor and helpless by providing free education.
• We intend to open a free dispensary / health centre to support the unfortunate people who suffer due to lack of money and education.