1. The Un MO d’où association
In 2014, 7 students from Master 1 Management and Operations in Caen (France) had a common objective which was to realise a humanitarian project. Since then, they created a humanitarian and non-profit association « Un MO d’où ». This name comes from the French "Un" which means "a", "MO" from Management and Operation, and "d'où" which means "from where" which is a reference to the mobility of the members. Together "Un MO d'où" sounds exactly the same than "un mot doux" in French which means "a sweet word" like the ones for our children...
Its action consist in raising funds and materials to bring support for under-developped populations and so improve their life conditions, with durability always in mind. To take projects to life, Un MO d'où get in touch with local humanitrian associations.
So, in April 2015, those 7 students collaborated with the French-Vietnamese association "Mère Isabelle" by financing and helping to build four concrete houses in Khanh Vinh village for four families having children with very poor life conditions.
Last year, the association grew up! indeed the previous year team decided to do it again. They found other members to finally be enough to mount three teams doing three new humanitarian projects: a water network for a village in Nepal and two classroom construction projects in Laos and Benin. They all succeed, result videos are at the end of the presentation video above.
This year, the association grew up agin since it contains now four groups with four new projects including our project: Nepal 2017.
2. The team Un MO d’où Népal 2017
We are eight people:
- Zeliha SUF, 24 yo, Budget
- Sara BEN S, 23 yo, Public and private partnership
- Stéphane MARSEILLE, 25 yo, Sponsoring, events
- Fabien LEGRAND, 29 yo, Actions organisator
- Shakir SUF, 29 yo, Project coordinator
- Noémie DESMOUCEAUX, 29 yo, Sponsoring, events
- Nahida ZINOUN, 22 yo, Communications
- Etienne LOMET, 24 yo, Logistic
We all come from different job and diploma types, our experience are advantages to take this project to life. This project will make us grow our competence in an appreciable way.
We all agreed on a common goal while choosing our current project: improve children schooling and bring help to a earthquake-devastated population. We will do that this year by re-building a classroom in Nepal.
3. Local partnership: the association « Humanlaya »
In order to bring our current project to life, we got in touch with the local association « Humanlaya ». This association was founded by Nathalie Despas in 2009.
Humanlaya's goal is to develop durable ways to support health, housing, education and food accesses, and all of that considering the traditions and believes of the different himalayan populations.
So, Humanlaya chose to set up a fair trade within Nepal, Tibet and India. The output money from this fair trade and from little associations like our are invested in humanitarian projects such as school constructions, medical structures, teachers/doctors training... Some members are present over there in the villages such as Marc Babulle, retired male nurse.
The current project has the following aim: the reconstruction and the setup of a destroyed classroom in a Nepali vilage: Runchet.
4. Why this choice: our motivations
We care about this project choice since it is in phase with our moral values and aims. The past student projects strongly persuaded us in our will to continue their work through our project within the association (Un MO d'où) that they founded. Our main goal being to help under-developped populations and to fully live this wonderfull human experience.
Nepal is in the top 10 poorest countries in the world. More than 68% of the population earn less than 2$/day. Only 20% of the country surface is usable for agriculture and the growing needs in wood for warming and in rice is leading to a significant deforestation. Furthermore, Nepal suffers numerous earthquakes. The marginality of the local humanitarian supports definitely proved us that nepalis need us and, above all, wait us.
We also want to prove that it is possible, at our student scale, to still significally improve under-developped population conditions of life and to allow children to get access to quality education so to increase their chance to build a better future.
5. Our Nepal 2017 project
So as said in previous sections, we will go to Runchet, a village which has its school destroyed by the last earthquakes ( especially the 25th of April 2015 one). Our goal is to bring our financial and workforce help to rebuild one classroom to start the children re-schooling. Runchet is relatively isolated, in the Manaslu region at around 1800m of altitude and has a population of about 2300 people.
From the 20th of May to the 7th of June, we will go there to participate to the construction. we will be supervised by Nepali workers and a guide. The ground foundations will be done before we arrive (because it takes several weeks to dry), then the classroom will be finished before we leave. (picture of the classroom first plan sent by our future guide)
To summarize: we have worked all along the year to gather money and plan the logistic and then once in Runchet we will have two main tasks:
- to participate to the construction
- to propose diverse animations/activities for the children!
