just-one strives to actively promote and facilitate educational opportunities for disadvantaged and marginalized children in Nepal by working at a grass-roots level with the children, their families and their communities to implement a range of carefully developed, culturally sensitive, sustainable initiatives.

Happy New Year!

With the 1st day of the month of Baishakh only a matter of seconds away from coming to an end, I’d best take this opportunity to wish all our friends and supporters a very Happy New Year! Regardless of whether or not you’re aware of the Bikram Sambat lunar calendar used officially here in Nepal, I hope that 2069 is a year full of health and happiness for all of you. With new years generally providing good opportunities for fresh starts and clean slates, I’d like to unveil the shamefully late follow-up to our inaugural newsletter of 2009. I’m pretty sure it contains more than enough words to let me off the hook with an uncharacteristically short blog-post here! Here’s hoping you enjoy what we’ve come up with this time ’round. If you do, perhaps you’d also be kind enough to download it, print it and share it with anyone else you think might be interested in learning more about our work.

2012 Newsletter –

Helping to make dreams come true!

Considering how incredibly effective the sharing of the ‘real-life stories‘ behind virtually each of the children supported by just-one would most probably be in helping to persuade any potential donors who stumble across our web-site to be drawn towards that nice green ‘make a donation‘ button on the sidebar to your right, it’s perhaps somewhat surprising how shamefully sparse the ‘their stories‘ section of our site has remained for a ridiculously long time now… There is, however, a particular reason for this which I’m about to attempt to explain here now, to the best of my ability, so please do bear with me if you dare to care!! ;o)

As already mentioned in greater detail in the general introduction on the ‘their stories‘ page, it’s through the sharing of such tales that we have the opportunity to bring our generous supporters closer to the important work which they kindly empower us to do here in Nepal and allow them to rightly share in some of the truly wonderful successes that we simply could not have achieved without their on-going assistance. While a few snippets of some of these real-life stories I speak of here, have certainly been shared in some random blog-posts over the last couple of years, any long-term visitor to this site might well question the continued presence of the now long-outdated “coming soon…” ending used on the page in question.

I’ve included the picture below in a sincere attempt to help me explain the frighteningly complex ethical issues (in my head, at least…) that we’ve been grappling with now for far too long already. These issues relate specifically to the rights of dignity and privacy of each and every individual we work with here in Nepal, versus the potential financial gain to be had from the open and honest sharing of their stories. Very few would argue, I imagine, that the photo portrays nothing short of a truly heart-wrenching scene – not that much different from countless similar scenes openly visible on the streets of Kathmandu which, in fact, combined to provide the initial catalyst that saw just-one spark into existence ’way back in 2004. Take a lingering look at the picture now in passing, but be sure to scroll on past it, before your eyes perhaps well-up – making the words I intend to continue with below little more then an illegible blur of dark pixels on your monitor…

It’s a picture that I took shortly after moving to Nepal in mid-2004 with the relatively unplanned, and largely emotional, notion of getting school children in my Irish homeland to help disadvantaged children in Nepal go to school. The photo holds far more personal significance than I could ever hope to share here, but that’s entirely irrelevant for now as I’ve chosen to include it simply to highlight another more important issue. Shakti Lama (the pseudonym he chose himself when he agreed some time back to allow just-one share his story on this here web-site) was a little boy who bravely accepted the offer of assistance we made him the morning after the night this photo was taken. With almost 8 years passed, he has now grown (so significantly, in fact, that he’s certain he’ll be unrecognisable in the photo above to anyone other than those he might choose to share the words “That was me!” along with his cheeky grin) into a confident young man – with a much brighter future ahead of him than he may otherwise have had and a somewhat remarkable story to tell.

While just-one is most certainly part of this young man’s inspirational story and he, in return, is currently one of our proudest success-stories to date – we’ve never been entirely comfortable with taking ownership of a story that’s primarily HIS to tell. Considering  the potential financial benefit the sharing of such stories can provide, it’s hardly surprising that they’re so often used by many others in this business called ‘charity’. To strum upon your heartstrings with the finer details of any particular individual’s story, with the primary intention of loosening your purse strings, does very little in terms of respecting the dignity which every individual (rich or poor) rightfully deserves. This significantly grey area of ethics is one which perhaps deserves far more consideration by all involved, while either preparing or browsing through the variety of fund-raising material that continually arrives by post or email – often sharing intimately personal details of the impoverished lives of some poor unsuspecting Pedro or Aaliyah in a faraway land, who may one day grow to discover (and perhaps question or even regret…) the potentially widespread knowledge of the underprivileged origins which either of them may understandably wish to leave in the past…

I realise that we can, and indeed should, provide at least summary details of the individual stories we’ve become part of through our work here in Nepal, but also remain ever-conscious of the potentially unhelpful and unwelcome ‘labels’ that doing so could so easily see applied to any of the individuals in question – more particularly so in a country as prone to stigmatisation as Nepal sadly remains… Shakti’s not (nor, as we have reassured him time and time again, does he have any reason to be) ashamed of his hard-luck start in this seemingly random lottery called life but, despite happily agreeing to allow us share his story openly, it’s also likely that he has very little comprehension of the utterly unpredictable outcome that our doing so may one day lead to…

His particular story is such an amazing example of how true our ‘it doesn’t take much to make a difference‘ tagline actually is, it was chosen as the focus of our next short film to advertise and promote the work of just-one. This particular film though is likely to forever remain in its current close-to-finished state on the hard-drive of the Irish film-maker who kindly volunteered his services to document just-one‘s involvement in Shakti’s remarkable rise from a young rag-picking street kid to an emerging talent in Nepal’s mountain-biking community. It would most certainly have helped to highlight the general success of the family-focused approach taken by just-one and would perhaps also have further explained that, while we regard education as a immensely important factor in breaking the cycle of poverty that most of those we work with are trapped in, their overall personal development is of equally significant importance.

It was in this particular regard, which sees us pro-actively encouraging and enabling the children we support to pursue any extracurricular activities and hobbies they may be interested in, that we introduced young Shakti and his mountain-biking ambitions to Dawn ’til Dusk - who kindly agreed to take him under their wing and allow him to join their staff training rides during his weekend break from the schooling opportunity just-one provided for both him and his siblings. It wasn’t too long before his apparent athletic talent was noticed by his biking mentors and, with the incredibly generous sponsorship of ‘The Children’s Project‘ in my native Clonakilty, just-one was in the fortunate position to be able to provide Shakti with the entry-level simi-pro bike which allowed him to further advance his clear athletic ability.

His intense passion and growing ambition for all things mountain-biking (coupled perhaps, amongst a variety of other factors, with the well-intentioned, though poorly-considered, mention of international training/racing opportunities made, somewhat prematurely, by a foreign competitor impressed by Shakti’s gutsy participation in last year’s Yak Attack – one of the five most difficult and challenging mountain bike races in the world) saw ‘education’ drop ever-further down his personal list of priorities. Eventually, only a matter of months before the District Level exams he was due to sit, Shakti sadly (though wholly understandably) decided he no longer required the educational support just-one had been providing him with and chose instead to focus entirely on his youthfully and determined ambition to be the best that he CAN become in his chosen sport.

Considering the original thought which spurred this particular entry to our somewhat more active blog of late, I’ve probably shared too much of Shakti’s story already and should honour his right to decide whether or not to ever share the finer and more identifiable details of what is essentially HIS own ‘That was me!‘ story. I do hope though, that I’ve in some small way at least explained the years old ‘coming soon…‘ ending to our ‘their stories‘ section. I’ll endeavour, as best as time allows, to ensure that these stories are indeed shared soon… It will most likely be with a revised introduction explaining that whatever stories are eventually published will be composite creations of the real-life stories we encounter each and every day through our ongoing work – told in the true and honest manner which potential donors like you expect and deserve, but also in the anonymous and personally unidentifiable manner which the individuals concerned are no less deserving of too!

Unlike the dust here, I’m well settled back in Kathmandu!

Good things, they say, take time and this leaves me quite unsure as to what excuse I could actually offer here for whatever random words I’m now about to type, so apologies in advance to all you fantastically patient followers of all things just-one! Hours turn days into weeks and on into months and so much happens in the meantime that remains shamefully untold, that I’m constantly surprised that we have any supporters at all, not to mind the slowly growing army we’re actually managing to recruit despite these times of global austerity and all such things of political greed and corruption that currently plague our strangely troubled planet!

My unexpectedly extended trip back to Ireland finally came to an end at the beginning of January when, happy in knowledge that my mother would soon be discharged from hospital in good health, I was able to re-engage just-one‘s fund-raising gear and set course for a brief stop over in Dubai, en route to Kathmandu, to discover if schools there would perhaps be as enthusiastic to help fund our growing work in Nepal as schools in Ireland have been over the last number of years.

Students of Regent International School in Dubai learning of just-one.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was at the amazing response I received during what was initially supposed to be a mere fact-finding mission. Though initially daunted by the very thought of it, the somewhat impromptu presentation I ended up giving to a sports-hall full of students (450, I’m told, in all… Yikes! ;o) at Regent International School went as smoothly as any other I’ve given across Ireland since our early beginnings in the rolling hills of West Cork ‘way back in 2003!

This most recent gathering of multicultural young scholars I had the pleasure of speaking to in a warm and sunny Dubai (despite what those I met there were saying about it being Winter ;o) stand to prove that children, the world over and regardless of their respective backgrounds, are generally a caring and compassionate species who, given appropriate opportunities, are more than willing (not to mention able) to offer a helping hand to those less fortunate than themselves.

Like countless more of their Irish colleagues, over the months and years gone by, the students of RIS are but hours away from participating in their first fund-raiser in aid of just-one, and our well-serving model of ‘kids helping kids’ continues and brings much hope and promise to those our incredible team of local staff here in Kathmandu work tirelessly to serve. Aside from being most welcome and even more appreciated, the sea of colour and smiling faces their school is likely to be awash with tomorrow (when they enjoy the Valentines Day Fancy Dress fund-raiser which was their chosen form of support); it is also timely in that, after more than seven years, it has left me finally contemplating the absolute necessity of developing a section on this here generally dusty part of cyber-space, specifically to duly acknowledge and rightly applaud the numerous inspiring events organised by the equally inspirational young students in the growing number of far-flung schools which just-one is truly fortunate to count amongst our kind and supportive friends.

Good things, as I said to begin with, take time, but right now I’ve got a battery indicator light flashing on my task bar and reminding me that I’m back in a city plagued by up to 18 hours a day of scheduled power outages (currently only 16 hours though, so it’s all good ;o) and, ‘absolute necessities’ notwithstanding, the development of entirely new sections of this here web-site will simply have to stand in line and allow the imminent posting of these words take precedence before they’re forever lost! ;o)