An update from Zara at Robinson College, Cambridge: "Thank you so much for the donation from The Alana Cutland Research Grant Fund towards my Part III project in Nepal. The project was a huge success. With your support, we were able to collect monsoonal rainfall samples from across the 140km² Mel-amchi catchment in custom rain collector units. These samples will allow us to examine spatial and temporal variability in the monsoon season – a huge improvement on the limited, generic datasets that existed before this. /more...

After 2 weeks in the field we came back with a pristine set of rain and spring samples, the latter building on an annual dataset from 2018. We hope that this season’s samples will reveal valuable insights into water flows in Mel-amchi, with the potential to inform similar studies in mountainous catchments beyond Nepal. Your generosity has made this possible—thank you for being a part of this important journey towards understanding and protecting our water resources. (Pictured: Zara (right) carrying out chemical analysis of her samples)

Latest photos below of the two new teachers' accommodations at the Fara sy Dimby school, which we funded as reported previously. We are pleased to say that the buildings are completed, and the teachers moved in on 21st December 2024. Although the houses still need a second coat of paint, the families were very keen to move in before Christmas, so they are happy to do the remaining painting themselves in their own time: this couldn't be done yet, because the paint required was out of stock. Progress over the last four months: