Nepal, home to Mount Everest and often called “The Roof of the World”, is the exciting destination for a group of Wellington students, with a hugely successful trivia night held this month getting them on their way.

Wellington Rotary Club have joined forces with Orange Rotary in taking the Year 12 Wellington High School leaders — Noah Brien, Shakyiah Elemes, Anna Lee, and Liam Miller — on a Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS) trip of a lifetime.

The four adventurers leave on Wednesday, November 15, for their three-week journey, with their trip including providing support for health services and helping local humanitarian projects.

The four will initially see the nation’s capital of Kathmandu, and from there will be travelling around the country participating in other activities before spending 10 days in a remote village that the program’s team leader Mary Brell OAM has been working with since 2011.

The tour will allow the students to use their backgrounds as trainees and apprentices to better help the local community with tasks such as health clinics, agriculture, and education.

Liam Miller said the trip would be a really good opportunity to experience the culture. “Another thing for me is, as I work in the hospital as a health trainee, it interests me to experience the health system in the village and how they cope,” Liam said. “Hopefully, I can assist in passing on some of the benefits that we have.” 

Shakyiah Elemes said that, as she also has a traineeship in health, it would be good to see and experience the difference between our health centres. “I think it will be a really good eye-opener to see a different culture to ours, but I’m also looking forward to seeing the mountains of Nepal,” Shakyiah said.

For Anna Lee, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which she’ll never get again. “I have a traineeship in childcare and we will be working with some schools there, so I’ll get to see how they teach and care for children,” Anna Lee explained.

As for Noah Brien, he’s very excited to go over to experience life out of Australia. “By comparison, we do have an easy life over here compared to where we are going in Nepal,” he said. “So I’m sure I will come back with a real eye-opener from seeing and experiencing life from a different perspective,” he added.

To assist in getting the group over there, Wellington Rotary donated a series of wood raffles for the group to sell during winter, with a fantastic trivia night in early September supported by more than 200 locals.

MC of the evening Ian Darney kept the audience engaged throughout the event, with many laughs along the way.

Over the night, the event raised a total of $10,000, a sum that the group are very appreciative of in helping defray their substantial travel costs for the trip.