We are delighted to announce that all our students have successfully qualified – pictured are Ramji, Hari, Saraswati and Shanti with their certificates.

All are now working full time in the Pokhara clinic, which is a little over-staffed now with 8 therapists (and only 5 couches – one broke!) so we’re hoping to move a couple to Kathmandu as soon as we can. Thankfully April is already shaping up to be a busy month so hopefully there will be enough clients for them all!

We will now be taking a couple of months break before starting our new student selections, as we are considering shifting our training base to Kathmandu so blind people from a broader geographical area can benefit. Our most experienced therapist, ChiranJeevi, who previously worked for 3 years as an Assistant Teacher in Pokhara, is also based at our Kathmandu clinic now, and we don’t want to see his excellent teaching skills going to waste! So we now need some time to sort out the logistics of running the training programme in a new location – and to make space for more therapists – and potentially students in or near our clinic in Thamel.

Samrat (pictured) has now been promoted to Senior Therapist, he’s been working at our Pokhara clinic for 3 years now and has been showing a lot of maturity and responsibility lately. He’s experienced enough now and we think he’ll do a great job keeping the others in check!

Some bad news

Unfortunately in March we had a break-in at the clinic in Kathmandu and lost our monthly takings (equivalent of about £250). The thieves broke through two padlocks and two locks to get in, so we’ve stepped up security now and started banking more regularly. No insurance in Nepal and there’s no hope of catching the culprits, we’re just hoping they get some seriously bad karma for ripping off a charity! The new clinic still hasn’t broken even so a loss was the last thing we needed.. but we’re dusting ourselves off and hoping for a better month in April. We can see a sustainable future for both clinics, but may just have to wait until 2012!