## **Trustee’s Annual Report 2021.**
Only six months into our first year as new and ambitious organisation the Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. It was at this moment, approaching the beginning of our charities second fiscal year two of our charity’s trustees were on the ground excited for our plans to start building our school in the rural Nepalese hillside of Baluwapati, within the Kavre district. Suddenly lockdowns began rapidly across Nepal, back home in the UK and indeed across the globe. One of our trustees rightfully needed to get back to the UK to be with his family, while I myself stayed on the ground hoping that the storm of the early pandemic would hopefully pass in due course; hoping I could be there to continue our labour of love, and our mission as a charity when restrictions were lifted. I was in the early stages of setting up a trust with our Nepali partners and working through the bureaucratic criteria needed for both the trust and the trust’s bank account when the carpet was pulled from beneath our feet as the first national Nepalese lockdown was announced under 24 hours before its implementation on March 23, 2020.
This left us with a dilemma as a young charity to move forwards without a built infrastructure around us in Nepal to help at the time, while we are only allowed outside to shop for a couple of hours in the morning consistently and in the evening when the government allowed.
This however would not completely impede on our will to serve those in need as trustees, however made it incredibly hard to help those in need in an official capacity as a charity and the situation made it incredibly hard to network as a charity.
Within days, part of the economic backbone of the country, the daily wage workers often already living on the poverty line, had already started suffering from growing hunger without any savings to feed their families. This grew more apparent with each new day of the lockdown, and their decline was only going to grow as we feared people are going to only become more financially unstable with no social welfare reserved for this emergency and on top of the people already homeless and below the poverty line that survived in the community on people passing them each day and the tourism in the area that was now mostly cancelled with the repatriation flights.
I met a British man at my guesthouse, a gentleman named Richard Bayfield who was eager to help the community and had set up a crowdfund for the purpose of feeding people that had hit hard times already or were facing the dangers of the lockdowns with great anxiety, unable to provide for their families. My first thought was to help him get his project off the ground and volunteer my heart and manpower to the cause. The hardest part of the situation for me was not being able to help in a more official capacity as a charity without having the trust in Nepal set up with banking yet for our work to continue. However, I also couldn’t sit back idle as a concerned citizen and as a Trustee of a charity to help people in poverty.
As a charity we did not collect or raise any money for this fund, and cannot take too much credit, however it was supported by our charitable ethic and heart as I joined a small team of local people and stranded foreigners volunteering as we started cooking. We would eventually serve 17,793 fresh meals by the 9[th] of June 2020 from our kitchen in our hotel rooftop in Thamel, Kathmandu. As trustees we only personally donated, volunteered and advised to Richard’s fund. Nepal was getting much more authoritarian in their lockdown measures by this point it would become harder and harder to deliver the meals, however knowing the beneficiaries situation much better within that time meant 250 family’s that had the means to cook, but no financial security could have their anxiety levels reduced
with dry food packages that could help see them through a full month of the pandemic; by then the country was relaxing the prohibitory orders of the National Lockdown as people could slowly start to work again.
Unfortunately, this was the best it got for us in our second year as a charity. As the government re-opened the countries roads systematically, I was receiving some upsetting news regarding our school project that we had been developing, and the reason we decided to become a board of Trustees. Budland School was unfortunately closing its doors permanently. I was surprised that the school was facing further vulnerability and judgements from the municipality about reopening, further to their struggle to survive over five years since the earthquake with little facility. The Municipality decided it didn’t want the school re-opening after the lockdown due to its lack of facility and saying that we would be unable to build further in support of this school. On visiting the municipality offices in an attempt to encourage them to re-consider their decision with all the hard work we had done as a charity to develop the project even passing the new building’s plan’s preciously and raising funds. I urged them to let us continue and that we had come back to Nepal before the lockdown to start building the new facility, while further expressing the positives for the community of the work we were hoping to carry out. The plans were passed for a two-year period to build in mid-2019 (before we became a charity later in the same year). Due to the pandemic, we had lost time and were unable to start the main building; had the main building been under construction I believe it would have maybe given us an advantage in this decision. Unfortunately, they were not as sympathetic to the cause, or the previous work we had done developing the project as I had imagined, and unwilling to grant further time on the project and said the decision was final and had been voted by leading members of their office on before we could have possibly have travelled out of Kathmandu Valley to present our case to continue. The Municipality further advised that the school will now lose their registration and has since been liquidated. This was heart-breaking news, and news that was not easy to take for both the school directors and ourselves. It will take time to move forwards from this situation with the allocated funds we had collected.
As a charity all our Trustees agree to continue our mission to be of service and support those in need in Nepal. All donations received have been held safely in our charities bank account and are safeguarded from being spent until we have a fully developed plan with the infrastructure set up in Nepal that all Trustees agree on and that fulfils our objective purposes as a charity while we move forwards from the Pandemic. The small commission (Six pounds per month on months we have had no income) the bank has charged; I will personally reimburse in a personal donation in the next year.
It will take time to access and develop a new project worthy of the kind donations we hold, but when and where we can help, we surely will as we continue to look to be of service to the communities here in Nepal. We would like to send our best wishes to everyone, sincerely hoping that everyone is safe and well. I would like to send further thanks for everyone’s kindness and patience as we continue to be tested emotionally and professionally in these times of instability, wishing good health as we keep moving forwards slowly from this incredibly challenging Pandemic.
David Wilson. Chair and Trustee, Building Budland.
|**Building Budland UK Charity Bank Account**
**Barclays Bank UK PLC**
**Account Number 83777340**
**Sort Code 20-90-74**|**Building Budland UK Charity Bank Account**
**Barclays Bank UK PLC**
**Account Number 83777340**
**Sort Code 20-90-74**|**Building Budland UK Charity Bank Account**
**Barclays Bank UK PLC**
**Account Number 83777340**
**Sort Code 20-90-74**|**Building Budland UK Charity Bank Account**
**Barclays Bank UK PLC**
**Account Number 83777340**
**Sort Code 20-90-74**|**Building Budland UK Charity Bank Account**
**Barclays Bank UK PLC**
**Account Number 83777340**
**Sort Code 20-90-74**|**Building Budland UK Charity Bank Account**
**Barclays Bank UK PLC**
**Account Number 83777340**
**Sort Code 20-90-74**|**Building Budland UK Charity Bank Account**
**Barclays Bank UK PLC**
**Account Number 83777340**
**Sort Code 20-90-74**|**Building Budland UK Charity Bank Account**
**Barclays Bank UK PLC**
**Account Number 83777340**
**Sort Code 20-90-74**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||**Date**|**Account**|**Gross Amount In(**|**Net Amount In(GBP)**|**Fee**|**Amount out(GBP)**|**Balance**|
|**Start Balance**|||||||**£10,209.68**|
|**1 **|**04.06.2020**|**Payment From Facebook**|**£258.36**|**£258.36**|||**£10,468.04**|
|**2 **|**19.06.2020**|**Payment From Facebook**|**£468.29**|**£468.29**|||**£10,936.33**|
|**3 **|**06.07.2020**|**Payment From Facebook**|**£100.00**|**£100.00**|||**£11,036.33**|
|**4 **|**07.12.2020**|**Bank Comission**||||**£6.00**|**£11,030.33**|
|**5 **|**07.01.2021**|**Bank Comission**||||**£6.00**|**£11,024.33**|
|**6 **|**04.02.2021**|**Bank Comission**||||**£6.00**|**£11,024.33**|
|**7 **|**08.03.2021**|**Bank Comission**||||**£6.00**|**£11,018.33**|
|**8 **|**08.03.2021**|**Bank Comission**||||**£6.00**|**£11,012.33**|
|**9 **|**07.04.2021**|**Bank Comission**||||**£6.00**|**£11,006.33**|
|||||||||
|**Total Income**||||**£826.65**||||
|**Total Ependiture**||||||**£36.00**||
|||||||||
|**Year Start Balance**|||||||**£10,209.68**|
|**Year End Balance**|||||||**£11,006.33**|
## **Building Budland UK Charity Paypal Account**
||**Date**|**Account**|**Gross Ammount**|**Net Amount Received**|**PayPal Comission Deducted **|**Amount Out**|**Balance**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Start Balance**|||||||**£254.53**|
|**1 **|**09.04.2020**|**Donation from Jonathan Kashe**|
**£25.00**|**£24.45**|**-£0.55**||**£278.98**|
|**End Balance**|||||||**£278.98**|
|||||||||
|**Total Income**||||**£24.45**||||
|**Total Expenditure**||||||**£0.00**||
|||||||||
|**Year End Balance**|||||||**£278.98**|
## **Annual Totals**
||||||||**Balance**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Totoal Charity Income**||||**£851.10**||||
|**Total Charity Expenditure**||||||**£36.00**||
|**Barclays Year End Balance**|||||||**£11,006.33**|
|**Paypal Year End Balance**|||||||**£278.98**|
|**Combined Year End Balance**|||||||**£11,285.31**|