Keeping A Global Student Connection Alive

Jan 08, 2014

Sydenham resident Leslie Myles recently returned from her second trip to Nepal, and one of her primary goals was to keep the global connection she began there one year ago between Kingston and Nepalese students alive and well.

Myles, who works as the managing director of the Limestone Learning Foundation in Kingston, made her first trip to Nepal at this same time last year for a fundraiser called The Everest Climb for Kids. On that trip she raised funds for the Limestone Learning Foundation, an organization that funds enhanced learning opportunities for children in the Limestone District School Board, and for the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation, which helps to fund a number of local Nepalese schools located in Nepal's mountainous regions. On that first trip Myles also visited the Khunde Hospital located in the Solukhomba region of Nepal, where her fundraising efforts helped to purchase an X-Ray machine there.

On that first trip Myles and some of her 15-member climbing team also personally secured funding to help four children of their Sherpa guides attend local schools. Myles brought with her on that first trip countless letters written by grade 4 and 5 students at Central Public School in Kingston and delivered them to the Nepalese students at the Shree Himalaya School and in doing so, opened up what has become a thriving connection between the students. While Myles' second trip was a solo and a more personal one, she said that one of her aims in going back was to “keep that global student connection alive as well as to check up on the four students that we (members of the initial climbing team) helped attend school. I wanted to go and see how the four students were doing, to secure their continued funding support and also to keep up the connection between the Kingston and Nepalese students that started last year.”

With that second goal mind in mind Myles brought with her on this trip more letters from the Kingston Central PS students and on her return to Sydenham came with an armful of letters from the Nepalese students, some of which I have included here. Myles also visited the Khunde Hospital and spoke with Dr. Kami, one of the first Sherpas to become a doctor there. She also spent time living in the homes of the students that she is personally supporting.

Myles, whose connection with Nepal has become as personal as it is professional, reiterated her feeling that education, no matter at here home or abroad is “the beginning of everything.” She explained, “ In this mountainous region of Nepal the primary source of income comes from trekking and most children will become guides. But when these children become educated, they have a lot more options open to them. Their parents’ main goal is get an education for their children.”

Myles said that her job with the LLF is to have a passion for kids and education and to enhance learning opportunities for children. “What I am trying to do is help create a tangible learning experience for students here and there and I am doing that through letter writing and by giving slide show presentations, and also through video feeds that we have been sending back and forth between the schools.”

She also brought back with her home-made trinkets and prayer shawls made by the Nepalese students to be given out to the Kingston students. Myles thrives on world-wide adventure and loves the thrill of experiencing some of the most remote places on the globe, and students across the globe are continuing to benefit from her personal passions. “The students both here and there are so engaged and excited to have this ongoing global connection. It's a real live experience for all of the students and both sides are learning from one another in a very tangible way.”

Myles has future plans to open up other avenues of communication between the students, including trying to utilize a new radio station set up in the Solukhombu region of Nepal. “I'd love to set up something with the new radio station there so that the students could be feeding information to each other on an ongoing basis.” Regarding the benefits to students, Myles said the experience goes a long way in broadening students’ horizons and giving them first-hand experience of the lives of others in far off countries, whom they otherwise might know very little about.