A TEENAGE volunteer says her eyes have been opened to the wider world after a three-month stint in post-earthquake Nepal.

Maisie Bartlett, of Barrow, has returned home after her voluntary work in rural Nepal, where 40 per cent of the population live in poverty and communities are still living in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in April 2015.

The 19-year-old spent three months living and working in Ripthok, a small village in central Nepal.

She travelled to Nepal with sustainable development charity Raleigh International, through the UK aid funded International Citizen Service programme. Miss Bartlett worked on a project to improve living conditions and help people build sustainable incomes through farming, to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

Ripthok was severely damaged in the devastating 2015 earthquake which claimed more than 8,000 lives and left more than 22,000 people injured, and 800,000 homes destroyed, across Nepal. Rural communities such as Ripthok, where levels of poverty were already high and access to public services severely limited, were strongly impacted by the earthquake and have struggled to secure food, water and shelter in the aftermath.

The former Walney School pupil, lived with a local host family, to fully immerse herself in the local community and gain a better understanding of the challenges they face.

Working in a team of young Nepali and British volunteers, she delivered training on sustainable farming methods and helped build Ripthok’s first tunnel farm, which will enable local farmers to grow crops all year round and guarantee a constant source of income for them and their families. The tunnel will be used as an example for future construction in Ripthok, ensuring the entire community benefits.

Miss Bartlett and her team-mates also ran sessions on the causes and effects of climate change, and how people can better protect themselves from future natural disasters. In villages like Ripthok, where people depend on farming for their income, sessions like these make the community less vulnerable and empower them to develop vital coping measures.

The team also worked with community members to identify opportunities to grow their income in other ways. They delivered peer to peer business skills sessions to young entrepreneurs, and worked with farmers to develop new business ideas, such as jam making.

Miss Bartlett said: “This really was the experience of a lifetime. To fully immerse yourself into the life and culture in somewhere so unlike the UK is something I’ve found so hard to describe to my friends and family since returning. My time in Nepal left me with some amazing memories, I’ve learnt skills I never thought I was capable of and I have had my eyes open to a wider world and my perspective changed hugely. Not forgetting the friends and second family I gained.

“We made a huge impact on the youth, I really noticed this when I was just walking round the village and I found a poster advertising our youth group. When I asked the group, none of us had made the poster. It showed how keen they were to be involved and this continued when the younger girls were drawing and replicating some of our climate change poster designs."

Raleigh ICS volunteers, aged 18-25, work on long-term projects that seek to tackle poverty in some of the poorest countries in the world. Those aged 23-35 can also apply to be ICS team leaders.

Before she left for Nepal, Maisie raised £850, which will go towards ensuring communities in developing countries benefit from the work of future volunteers.

As well as making a difference in some of the world’s poorest communities, Raleigh ICS volunteers gain valuable skills and experience. Now that she has returned home, Miss Bartlett will take on an Action at Home project, ensuring that her new skills also benefit her local community.