January 14th 2016

Anthony Lunch of the MondoChallenge Foundation

With a history that includes studying at Oxford University, working with Voluntary Service Overseas, Unilever and Phildar, Anthony has a wide and international business background. After founding the Sermathang Project in Nepal, creating and supporting a number of schools, he went on to found MondoChallenge Foundation, in order to widen the scope of the original project – Education and Livelihood.

Anthony will talk to us about the catastrophic earthquake which hit Nepal last year and what MondoChallenge are doing to help.

Review of the evening
Anthony, a resident of Milton Malsor since the 1980s filled us in on the background to his forming MondoChallenge, a locally based company supporting people in Nepal, Tanzania and North East India. The company is primarily involved in education of both children and women. The latter are helped to set up small businesses with mentors as well as money to help them to get started. Not only are schools constantly being built in these areas but water projects and some disaster relief work takes place also. The main area of concern currently is in Nepal where the earthquake last year devastated a lot of the area where projects are running. Thousands of fleeces, hats and rucksacks containing all the things children need on a daily basis have been bought or donated through the company. Greenhouse projects, solar panels for mobile phones, sports kits and teacher training are also ongoing in these areas.

The talk was very interesting and thought provoking. Anthony is very enthusiastic about his work and the wellbeing of the families in these countries. He visits as often as he can and is in communication with Jimmy, the local manager in Nepal who trained with MondoChallenge, has visited Milton Malsor and obtained his degree at Sussex University.

Our Bring and Buy provided funds for the charity.

Competition:  A Challenging Journey
The winner was Paula Neal for a journey taken by Milton Primary School in 1990, to York. 50 minutes into the journey up the M1, a lorry jackknifed in front of them, snow continued to fall heavily and the 2 minibuses were stranded along with hundreds of other vehicles for over 8 hours.

2nd was Sheila Charlton with an illustrated poem written at the summit of Everest  - not by Sheila!
3rd was Brenda Binks with photos of another snowy journey to Sheffield in 1973.