ABOUT US
Founded in 2019, Partners for Progress supports education and community development projects in rural Nepal. The charity strives to maintain and strengthen a friendship link that has existed for over thirty-five years between Leweston School in Dorset and Shree Jana Jyoti Secondary School in the Gandaki Province of Nepal. We are also custodians of a sponsorship scheme that was founded around the same time as the friendship link and provides financial support to students who otherwise may not be able to access education.
​
Since its foundation the charity has facilitated the sponsorship of between forty and fifty students each year. We work closely with Leweston School to maintain and strengthen the friendship link and have supported two recent trips by Leweston students to Shree Jana Jyoti. We have collaborated with local government to assist in the provision of vocational agriculture education and have built strong relationships with community groups to support projects such as the construction of a cultural heritage museum and community kitchen and to provide equipment to a local health post.
​
Partners for Progress is also represented on the Education Working Group of the Britain-Nepal NGO Network (BRANNGO) which seeks to facilitate and encourage cooperation and collaboration amongst the UK-based NGO community working in Nepal.
​
HISTORY
I had taught at Leweston School in Dorset for many years when, in the early 1980’s, I had the opportunity to trek in Ladakh and Zanskar over the summer months. The experience was so overwhelming that when I returned to Leweston I enthused about it to my students. The result was that seven of them and I set out to Nepal in 1987 in the Easter holiday. There we spent four weeks river rafting, riding elephants in the Terai and trekking. On the trek one evening we came to Baglungpani village and asked the local headmaster, Ganga Ghale, if we might camp on the high field above the school. Ganga invited us to visit his little school (Shree Jana Jyoti) which had been built of local stone twenty-seven years previously. The buildings were in bad repair but the enthusiasm of students and teachers was such that we were inspired to ask if we might become sister schools in friendship and help to repair their school.
For ten years Ganga and I worked on repairs (Leweston raising money mainly by Friday cake sales). In 1997, we started to rebuild according to Ganga’s plans (he had visited Leweston for some weeks and was inspired to improve Nepali education). In 2001, Ganga and my husband and I raised funds to build what Ganga called ‘Rutter Home’. He then retired and Bil Gurung who had taught under Ganga Ghale was appointed headmaster. Over the years since, the school has been enlarged and rebuilt into the fine school it is now, earning its local name of ‘The Beacon’ as it shows the way things can be. Throughout the years the friendship between the schools has deepened with visits by volunteers, mainly from Leweston, spending three or four months of their gap years in Baglungpani and through visits to Leweston by Ganga and Bil.
I myself have lost count of the number of my visits to Jana Jyoti before or after the expeditions I have led in the mountains. But I do know that it has been an enormous privilege and delight to work with Ganga Ghale and Bil Gurung, both charismatic headmasters who have quietly led and inspired the work while preserving the special peace and joyous atmosphere which has touch the lives of so many visitors there.
​
Elizabeth Rutter - Founder of Partners for Progress
