03/01/2021
Dear friends and followers !
We have an important and an urgent story to share with you all. 🙏
We are here to ask for your support to save our dream. A dream that serves arts, artists, the local and global communities and the earth. https://bit.ly/SAVE-LUKEKO-GAUN
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Since 2007, Gopal (Founder of International Center for Social Theater - ICST Nepal and Lukeko Gaun, A village for arts and farming) used theatre to serve rural communities of Nepal. Working with several I/NGOs he travelled over 50 districts of Nepal and used his energy and art to create happiness among the people. He played with children, taught the theatre, created plays with them and performed in their communities, in front of their parents. Those children never knew what theatre is and never got chance to see televisions. He worked with women facing domestic violence, created plays with them on their own challenges and issues and they performed in front of their husbands and families. He invested his 13 precious years to support marginalized people and helped bringing their smiles back.
The houses, the family members, the happiness, the dreams, everything of hundreds of thousands of people’s, turned into rubbles from the earthquake in Nepal April, 2015. Creating and leading a team of artists he travelled over 14 districts and worked on psychosocial support. Spreading happiness as much as he could was his only goal of life. And still he doesn't want to lose that energy and hope to be able to keep creating smiles and peace to the world we live in. To see some of his work please visit these links.
1. https://charity.org/give-global-blog/meet-helpers-americares-incredible-heroes-health
2. https://www.spotlightnepal.com/2013/11/19/half-the-sky-film-and-arts-festival-will-begin-next-week/
3. https://www.americares.org/gopal-aryal/
4. http://wereldhuis.org/do-you-want-to-join-a-workshop/
And because we all deserve to dream, to Imagine, he has a dream to create a centre/hub for artists, practitioners who practices arts to bring smiles to the world. He became able to dream this together with 30 other people in Senegal, West Africa for the first time in 2015, December. After the hard work of 3 years he made some earning and bought a piece of land in 2018, October in a village near Kathmandu to fulfil the dream of creating this centre. After he put all the money to buy the land, he took a loan of 1,000,000 Nepali rupees (Approx. USD 10,000) from a bank to invest in the centre with 14% interest, thinking that he would clear the loan in few months from his income from theatre works at that time.
And unfortunately he lost all the works mainly because of covid-19 effects. He lost all the earnings and had very hard time even to pay for family expenses.
We did two crowdfunding program before and collected 2,675 USD altogether, some of it we invested in the centre and some went to the family expenses and again to pay the monthly EMI of the loan.
Lately he hasn't been able to pay the EMI for the past five months and sadly now the bank is not happy and is in process to put the land on auction to recover loan amount from him. We need to save this land to save our dream, to make thousands other people to be able to dream. And for this there is no way that we can do without your support, love and care.
Please kindly back this project and share to your circles who would care and support this cause. ImaginaAction team is offering discounts on workshops for your supports and the village will count your donations.
If you are looking to support investing big ($1000+) in the center and joining as founding friend, please write us to [email protected] .
PS: We know and understand that many of you have already supported in our previous crowdfunding campaign (Gofundme- Indigogo) and they all count. We are now in hardest time of saving this dream and project.
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Hugs to you all !
Namaste !
