Nikita's Regenerative and Sustainable Nepal Trip

Hello, my name is Nikita Melamed and I am currently working on a trip with a group of 10 students that aims to take us to Nepal in order to learn more about culture, religion, and practices that take place there. This aims to be an educational trip, where we learn in depth about the different types of culture, different religions that are practiced there, as well as how to take part in these religions through meditation and cultural practices, and even learn about the general culture that Nepal can provide us insight on. As well as learning about these things, we plan to take a massive part in ensuring that we make this trip a sustainable trip, where we’re keeping the trip carbon neutral and ensuring that we can make this a regenerative trip, that future classes can go on, and learn from. We will be ensuring that this trip is a regenerative trip by all working on individual curiosity projects that we’re extremely passionate and motivated to create, and by trying out new types of experimental education that Nepal can provide to us through a partner school in Nepal. Doing this will allow us to make an impact on all travelers in the world as well, as we’re offering heavy insight on how other communities and people can also work on making their trips more regenerative in the future, as this is a current growing problem, and it is slowly killing the tourism industry for lots of countries, which is a necessity for them to grow.

During our time spent planning this trip, we came up with a group mission statement. It is as follows: “Our mission is to launch a regenerative travel program to Nepal for D.Tech students. We aim to practice sustainability through cultural immersion, individual curiosity projects, and experiential education. In the long run, we plan to implement an exchange with a partner school in Nepal and introduce prototypes for exploring global issues”. This mission statement hopefully allows others to understand the type of collaboration and the type of passion that we all have for this project, and how this trip is not just a trip to a foreign place that we’re going on to have fun, but it is really a trip where we’re trying to learn and provide valuable insights and information about sustainable tourism, as well as the multitudes of vast culture that takes place in Nepal that we can bring back and teach people at our school, as well as our communities.

Today, I am here to ask for your support for this project, and I am hoping that you see the potential in our project. I hope that you are able to see the motivation that we all have for this project, and how much we all genuinely want to be able to make this trip a reality, in order to make a massive difference in the future lives of travelers, Nepalese people, and our school. My group as well as I are currently asking for a donation, in order to ensure that we are able to fund this project through crowdfunding, in a way that is sustainable and allows for us to have the ability to go on this trip, while also providing valuable information and a project for supporters to see. Any size of donation would be greatly appreciated, and all donations will have the ability to see my personal curiosity project, that will take place in the form of a month-long documentary about our trip, as well as a documentary of the practices, and the after-effects of the trip on us. Thank you for your time and consideration today by reading this, and I hope that you are able to support our journey on this trip. - Nikita Melamed, Design Tech High School 2024