We're thrilled to share that AFPN has been featured in Elvesier, a major Dutch magazine.  Sudip met with Ruben Brekelmans, a Harvard student and regular contributor to Elvesier this past Monday, and greatly enjoyed conversing with him. Many thanks to Mr. Brekelmans for writing such a great article.  The column is in Dutch, but google translate does a pretty good job of translating it to English. Check it out here! We'd love to hear your thoughts.

The Vincent L. Hawkinson Foundation honored Sudip Bhandari as the Jacobson scholar (top scholarship recepient) for 2014, and awarded a $5,000 scholarship for making significant and sustained contribution to peace and justice in Nepal through AFPN. They featured Sudip on their website. 

Here are a few pictures from the award ceremony. Sudip was joined by two of his college professors/mentors, Dr. Kris Thalhammer and Dr. Tom Williamson. 

Sudip Bhandari was recognized with the Senior Leadership Award at St. Olaf College for making an outstanding contribution to the campus community, and for establishing Anne Frank Project Nepal. Check out the award ceremony here! Sudip is introduced at the 26 minute mark. 

Sudip is pictured at the far right, and is standing with other award winners from different categories.

Sudip Bhandari spoke passionately about AFPN at St. Olaf College's chapel service on Monday. St. Olaf College holds chapel services daily, allowing students the opportunity to attend, speak, and reflect on the world around them. Check out his speech here! 

After presenting our amendments and student pledges for the lessons related to the Second World War in grade 10 social studies curriculam to the acting director, Dr. Bal Krishna Ranjit in the Curriculum Development Center, Anne Frank Project Nepal 2012 has finally come to an end. We spent around an hour discussing the possibilities of including the topics of the Holocaust and the story of the Anne Frank along with other major events and figures related to WWII in Nepalese curriculum. Dr. Ranjit, a great appreciator of world history himself held AFPN's effort in high regard and promised to present the amendments to the academicians related to the field. He also assured us that he would provide us with enough feedback once he held the meeting with other officials. 

Before our visit to the CDC, we had met the undersecretary of Ministry of Education, Mr. Rojnath Panday to discuss the procedures and likelihood of amendments. We had received a very positive response from him. 

We hope we hear from Dr. Ranjit soon. (Though he is the deputy director of the CDC, he is currently acting as director).

Please have a look at the pictures below. Any feedback are most welcome. 

We will be waiting for the feedback. 

After visiting 12 schools in 4 districts and reaching out to more than three thousand students in three months, Anne Frank Project Nepal's educational exhibition has finally come to an end today, at Kathmandu Academy. Over the course of these school visits, we found most of the students very enthusiastic and thoughtful about the topics we discussed. Around 99% of the students did not have any idea about the Holocaust. Few of them knew Anne Frank, but not a whole lot. But we were very excited to learn that almost all students we interacted with thought that the topics that we presented on were important and they should be included in Nepalese curriculum. We have collected 745 pledges to support the movement to amend the curriculum of Nepal so that the story of Anne Frank, and the history of the Holocaust are mentioned in grade 10 social studies textbook. We have developed lessons (Thanks Nick) that includes important historical figures and events related to the second world war that have been obliterated from Nepalese curriculum. We will be presenting that to the Curriculum Development Center in Kathmandu in next couple of days.

About the visit in KA itself, students had a lot of reflective questions. It was  very nice of those students to attend the program even after their classes was over for the day. A particular question from a student currently studying A levels struck us. He asked how hopeful we were that the CDC would be taking us seriously, and that our amendments would be acknowledged. We replied that we, to a certain degree were hopeful, but not a whole lot. We recently had a meeting with a secretary at the Ministry of Education and he had told us that it was a right time for the amendment because the CDC has been planning to change the entire grade 9 and grade 10 curriculum. So, our amendments could be taken seriously. But, keeping the fact that Nepalese curriculum hasn't changed for a very long time, our proposal could just be stored in the piles of other files. But, we will make an effort, and we think that is more important. 

Please have a look at the pictures from the KA visit.

 We will be back with more information in just few days. 

On a fine morning of 29th July, AFPN visited DAV Sushil Kedia VV HSS in Jawlakhel, Lalitpur. We interacted with around 200 grade 10 students. It was the first time we had reached out to such a large number of students in a single school for presentation/discussion session. Sudip Bhandari had talked about the project in DAV's school assembly the previous Friday, and had asked students to search about the Holocaust and Anne Frank in the internet during the weekend. The pre-learning exercise worked, and a lot of students had very thoughtful questions on Sunday. 

Please find pictures here:

There is one more school visit for this year. Please come back for more updates...

On 25th July, AFPN visited Ullens School as a part of traveling educational exhibition. Most of the students there knew about Anne Frank. Principal, Mr. Medin Lamichanne told us that grade 7 students there read Anne Frank's book "The Diary of a Young Girl" as a part of their curriculum. It could be the only other school besides Rato Bangala School that has Anne's book in its school curriculum; it is definitely a matter of research. 

The next day, on the 26th we visited Rupak Memorial International HS School. We had few troubles setting things up, and we had to cut the presentation short because of scheduled load shedding, but everything else was fine. We received a lot of thoughtful questions from the students even after the program was over. 

Please have a look at some pictures from these school visits:

Come back for more updates...

AFPN visited SOS Herman Gmeiner School and Little Flower School in Chitwan. We had trouble using the power points, so, we improvised our introductory presentation a little bit. We used black boards and the posters to explain concepts and terms. It was a different experience because it allowed us to interact with students even more. We were extremely glad that students asked thought provoking questions and their answers to the questions in their survey were very reflective. We would like to thank the school administration in both these schools for welcoming us even in a very short notice.

Please have a look at the pictures from Chitwan:

Please check back for more updates in future...

AFPN visited 4 different schools here in Pokhara (SOS Herman Gmeiner School Pokhara, Tops Higher Secondary Boarding School, Novel Academy and Amar Singh Higher Secondary School) in the span of two days. It was mostly school administrations' help in setting things up, and the inquisitiveness students demonstrated that made all of these visits really effective. We are hoping to start school visits in Chitwan in next couple of days.

Please find pictures from our school visits in Pokhara: