Mahakulung Scholarship Programme

Scholarship Pilot for Orphaned and Underprivileged children to Return to Full-time Education in the Mahakulung Region.

Aims and Objectives:

This pilot, in a collaboration between the Everest Mera Foundation (EMF) and New Futures Nepal, aims to support around 50 orphaned and underprivileged children from the Everest tourism sector and Mahakulung villages who have dropped out of school and are now working as labourers in domestic work, construction, or the tourism sector in the Khumbu or surrounding areas.

The project is supported by a £5,000 grant from the Ardonagh Community Trust and coordinated by Meg Spurin of Navigators & General Insurance Company Ltd., and represents a vital step towards protecting vulnerable children and helping them return to education.

Progress to Date:

Following a public awareness and recipient identification phase, where our friends at the EMF created public announcements for Mahakulung Television and Solu FM in both video and audio formats (which ran twice a day and reached 1000s of followers in the region), site visits to many schools in Mahakulung (ensuring school leaders, teachers, and parents clearly understood the objectives and procedures of the programme) were conducted, as well as visits to the Khumbu Everest region to identify child labourers and create awareness of the programme.

A selection committee was then formed, and the team started to accept applications. A total of 59 applications were screened for eligibility and verified with school administrations, and formally approved by the committe in February of 2026.

Preparations are now well underway to present the successful applicants with their educational support package by April 2026, to enable the children to return to their schools for the new school year.

This programme is unprecedented, and will be up-scalable to improve the lives of potentially 100s of vulnerable children in the Mahakulung region.‍ ‍