Do you remember skimming stones on the water as a child, watching as the first pebble hits the water, and then watching as tiny little ripples spread outwards all the way to the edge of the lake? At Q. Learning we believe that anything is possible; we aim high, we like an adventure and definitely a challenge.

As a company, we teach team building – indeed we have written a book about it - and so when we decided some years ago to do some team building within our company, we sailed across the Atlantic together in the trans-Atlantic race.

Q. Learning is a company that in essence is all about learning, and whether we are teaching learning direct, teaching our clients to help their staff learn or learning ourselves, we enjoying the growth and development that comes out of it. So when MD Lesley Gosling went on a summer adventure to Nepal, she was touched and inspired by the courage and determination of how the Nepalese children do their learning in school. She discovered that there are roughly 80 children in a class with usually only four textbooks between them. The children’s families are usually extremely poor, earning only a dollar or two a day, but somehow the family manages to raise enough money for their school children to each have a note pad and pencil to take with them. The children can walk miles uphill and over cascading streams to get to school, they turn up dressed immaculately, they treat their pencil and paper with great care and by eight they are fluent in reading English.

Lesley was so inspired by the strength and self discipline of the Nepalese children that when she learned of her trekking guide’s village miles from anywhere, four days’ travel by bus east of Everest, with children who desperately needed a school to improve the quality of the children’s life in the future, she realised that this was the perfect new challenge for Q. Learning to rise to.

So now in October 2008 Q. Learning has already begun the project of building a school in a village on a hilltop in Nepal, and we will need your help!

We have already had offers of help from a generous Q. Learning people; so a big thank you to them. Lesley has found a project manager called Neil Taylor who will be building the school; he and Lesley are flying to Nepal at the beginning of November to find out how to move things forward and to survey the land so that drawings and plans can be made. We have had offers of books for the teachers to teach the school curricula, some money to go towards some of the building materials to create the structure of the building, as well as money for teachers’ salaries. We are also organising a big group trip out to the village in May (9th – 16th) when we are hoping to launch the school – and you are welcome to join us. It will be a huge adventure with sherpas carrying tents, beds, kitchens, toilets, food and all necessities. The village is high in the mountains, an hour’s flight from Kathmandu and three hours from the nearest road. Although flights are not cheap, once there the cost will be small even with a request of a donation. If potentially interested, please put the date in your diary and let us know. We will tell you more in November.

However, we still have a long way to go in completing the project; first we need to raise more money to make it a sustainable project to pay for on-going teachers’ salaries etc. Q. Learning is setting up a charity called ‘The Big Hills’ School’ to manage contributions. We have networked and found a fundraising company which has built an orphanage in Nepal and which is giving us suggestions and we still need lots more help and suggestions of any sort to bring this project to successful fruition, because we are learning along the way about how to produce a project like this. Maybe you have done something similar before, or maybe you know someone else who has done a project like it? If you do, please offer us some advice or help by emailing your suggestions to clare.gosling@qlearning.com we will be really grateful.

We will be updating the story as we go along to keep you informed of our progress, and to keep you in the loop about what’s new; creating the school is only the begining - watching the children as they begin to learn and grow as the ripple affect spreads is the real treat to wait for!

Click here to see photos of a typical school and Lesley's visit.