109 children now enjoying the sweet smells of country living – “Thanks Nanshan Challenge”

ORSEDA is a poor village located in remote rural Qinghai Province. For some years now, children in this village have been facing contaminated and unhygienic conditions everyday creating regular sickness, missed days from school, and lots of PHEW!!! Whenever it rained, the village toilet would overflow onto the only road used by the children to walk to and from school. Poor drainage along the whole length of the walking path also made for slippery and dangerous conditions. Sickness levels were especially elevated in the younger children who, like all young children, love to play in water.

Thanks to funding from the 2015 Nanshan Challenge, along with the village committee making a financial matching contribution, a long-
awaited sewer channel was built. The villagers provided ALL of the labor digging ditches along the full stretch of road between the village and the school. In total, 2,000 mtrs of sewerage pipe was laid.

When asked how the sewer channel project has impacted her family, Dromatso said with appreciation, “With the sewer channel we do not have to worry the kids will slip over or put unclean water in their mouths. It has not only reduced the safety hazard for both kids and older members of the village but also kept the kids from unclean water.”

This was all possible because of Nigma Drolgar, a third year student at Qinghai Normal University. Nigma attended the PCH Capacity Training Program supported by Captivating International and funded by Shenzhen based PCH. Nigma presented this project proposal during her training and was thrilled that Captivating elected to support it. She worked closely with Carrie Lhamo from Shamtse Charity (one of our Qinghai registered charity partners) to implement this project. Tserang, the village leader was incredibly grateful for the difference the sewer channel has made to his village, and very appreciative of Nigma.“I never thought a young, female student like Nigma would be able to bring this support for the village. Thank you very much for your hard work and commitment to the village.” Not only has this project helped the village, but it has hopefully also resulted in villagers taking a little progressive step froward regarding their perceptions about the value of women. We are proud of you Nigma and Shamtse Charity.

This is a direct result of what the PCH Capacity Training Program is all about – students giving back to their village and creating sustainable difference. This happened because of a committed group of runners in Shenzhen taking on a competitive challenge for a good cause. And this is what Captivating is all about – helping children reach out for a better tomorrow. Taken all together – simple, yet wonderful things can happen. And, let’s face it, the village hasn’t smelt this good in a long time.