Joshua Savage

My experience with VIN was exactly what I was looking for. My monastery got changed the week before arrival, because the original one was on retreat, and I would not have had it any other way! The new monastery I was assigned to was relatively new, only 5-6 years old, and it was absolutely brilliant! There was a constant supply of drinking water, and there was also often hot water, something I was not expecting.
 
The teaching itself was great, although the monks were slightly younger than I was expecting; I had no problems at all. The monastery was trying to create a new curriculum, which I helped to create, and provided plenty of materials and also the standard Nepali textbooks for learning English, which made sure I had some direction with my teaching, incredibly useful for first time teachers like myself.
 
The support from VIN was also very good, any questions were answered quickly, and we had an abundance of phone numbers we could contact 24 hours of day if we had any problems (although I only had to use these to confirm the time I was being picked up on the last day). The staffs are all incredibly friendly and willing to answer any questions you may have about your program, to health, to Nepali culture, to cooking, to travelling to anything you can think of. I would highly recommend this organization to anyone wishing to visit Nepal and make a difference to a country that really needs help from outside volunteers in order to progress.