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:

This project is in the public awareness and recipient identification phase. Our friends at the EMF have been busy creating public announcements for Mahakulung Television and Solu FM in both video and audio formats, which will run twice a day and reach 1000s of followers in the region.

The EMF are also conducting site visits to many schools in Mahakulung (ensuring school leaders, teachers, and parents clearly understand the objectives and procedures of the programme), as well as visiting the Khumbu Everest region to identify child labourers and create awareness of the programme.

The programme’s selection process will begin December 2025, with an aim to conduct the final selection of scholarship recipients and present scholarships from February, 2026. This programme is unprecedented, and if successful, will be up-scalable to improve the lives of potentially 100s of vulnerable children in the Mahakulung region.