The UKNFS is delighted to have received an Awards 4 All Big Lottery grant for its multiple location Nepali UK new communities members & related advice project. Work is already under way with this and across the October-November 2017 period a number of UK Nepali community engagement meetings will be taking place, from Aldershot & Farnborough, to Bournemouth/Dorset, SE and West London, to Kent. These will be to gather community members experiences of accessing public services, seeking employment and experience of employment, and accessing advice services.
This project will see the creation of valuable information resources on residing, working and living in the UK for new members of the Nepali community and those members of the community who have restricted understanding of English, and/or are otherwise marginalised in terms of knowledge of advice across a range of important topics. The information resources (in Nepali and English) will be disseminated by the UKNFS and main partnering/collaborating UK Nepali community organisations (NRNA, Tamu Dhee, Sahara UK, etc.) as well as the Nepali media, giving from early 2018 a genuinely national outreach for the UK Nepali community’s support and benefit.
The project will produce in conjunction with the information resources (that will also be provided on the UKNFS website), a report on the experiences of UK Nepali community members needing and accessing advice. This will include guidance and recommendations on support for enhancing or improving outreach of a range of public service organisations, local authorities, and advice services, to Nepali community members at national and given project locations, levels.
The UK Nepal Friendship Society would like to thank the Big Lottery and those who generously fund it, for their invaluable support on making this greatly needed project, and accompanying information resources creation, possible. BL’s importance to the UK Nepali community has been demonstrated before with its funding of the exploratory/trialling phase of our UK Nepali community equality in health & social care initiative.
The advice project will also enable aspects to be developed that assist community led discussions to take place, that can have a related benefit for taking forward later in 2018, a separate initiative to develop a pan-UK level successor to the equality in health & social care initiative.
The UKNFS at the request of Mr Ekendra Gurung, a senior figure in the UK Gurkha community and Advisor at Tamu Dhee UK Association, has initiated and supported the leads of the main UK Nepali community organisations – Tamu Dhee, NRNA, Sahara UK, and others — in seeking to undertake a fact-finding educational, formal UK Nepali community organisations leads delegation visit to Parliament.
The visit will take place on November 23rd 2017, and has been kindly facilitated by the head of the Parliamentary Outreach Team, and with much appreciated support by Mr Virendra Sharma, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Nepal. The visit initiative has the dual purposes on boosting UK Nepali community participation in parliamentary elections and the broader democratic process, and gathering valuable insights of value for Nepal’s own parliamentary democracy.
When the initiative is complete, a report on findings will be provided to the Ambassador of Nepal to the UK and the British Ambassador in Nepal, as well as to the ‘Speakers’ of both houses of parliament at Westminster, and the speaker of the Nepal Parliamentary Legislature, and potentially government ministers and leaders of the UK political parties.
We are delighted to share that our UKNFS PR Ambassador/Advisor, TV chef Sarah Ali Choudhury has received an award for ….. Sarah is going to be working with UK Nepali community members with interests in preserving and promoting authentic/traditional Nepali cuisine & recipes on a UKNFS Nepali cultural heritage project that will be starting in January 2018.
‘Sarah has been shortlisted for two leading awards at this year’s Venus Awards including Influential Woman of the Year Award sponsored by Mercedes-Benz and Inspirational Woman sponsored by Bournemouth University.
The Venus Awards celebrate and recognise local working women-in-business. Established in Dorset in 2009, the Venus Awards now operate in ten regions across the UK.
The Finalists were announced at Hallmark Hotel Bournemouth Carlton where over 130 guests came together on Friday 8th September to celebrate women-in-business.
Sarah’s catering business serves authentic gourmet Indian cuisine for events and functions across the region. Earlier this year Sarah was awarded the title of New Kid on the Block at the Small Awards in London, and was also a finalist for The Rising Star Award at the Bournemouth Tourism Awards.’
We wish Sarah good fortune with both awards contests, which further support her work for the UKNFS on promotion of UK-wide awareness of traditional Nepali cuisine.
The UKNFS is raising funds through requests to our Network and through it broader contacts regarding support to those afflicted by the terrible and devastating late August 2017 floods (please read more about the scale and costs of these in the Guardian). Our thoughts and hearts are with all those suffering at this time, and are fundraising for the following organisations that we partner with directly and formally, so any amount no matter how small or greater will be going directly to flood recovery support activities by each, that have directly requested our support:
Child Nepal: http://www.sharing4good.org/users/child-nepal
Janaki Women Awareness Society: http://www.jwas.org.np/
We will also provide some donation to the community of the Gaumukhi Development Area (GDA) a remote rural region in the Western Nepal also affected, with whom we have had a long-standing relationship through our Nepal International Arts Programme (http://creativenepal.co.uk/gaumuki-development-area-niap/)
Bank account name: UK Nepal Friendship Society
Bank: HSBC (Bournemouth)
Sort Code: 40-13-07
Account Number: 82428806
Any donations will be greatly appreciated by the named beneficiaries, and we will be keeping this campaign open until December 1st 2017 and providing information on what support activities and items your donation contributes towards.
Read more about the report’s main launch (9th July), and subsequent launch at Bournemouth University (22nd July).
The UKNFS is delighted as a result of the success of our projects work, to be listed on the useful links section of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office initiated Britain Nepal.org website which has been created in support of the UK – Nepal Bicentenary commemoration and celebration.
The UK Nepal Friendship Society [UKNFS] is an inclusive UK-based INGO [international non-governmental organisation], also with a chapter in Nepal, that is projects-orientated (education, health and wellbeing, Nepali cultural heritage/arts, etc.). We are a not-for-profit, Companies House registered organisation (registration number: 8626011) with charitable objectives, that offers membership to all who share our vision and values and who wish to support our programmes and projects.
We work for the interests and voice of all members of the UK’s Nepali community, and for all in the United Kingdom that honour and seek to further inclusive multicultural values in our multiracial nation.
You can read more about us and our background on our About page, and about our main activities on our Projects page.