The Acronis team has just come back from a school building trek in Nepal. In total, 18 Acronis employees travelled from around the world to work side-by-side with the remote village community of Rajipur Chaumala to break ground for a future school.

This is the second trek completed by Acronis volunteers since the Acronis Cyber Foundation non-profit was founded in 2018. During their stay with the community, trek participants successfully broke ground on the project and laid the foundation for a building basement and sanitary rooms for boys and girls. Once completed, the school will have 2 classrooms and serve 150 children.

Aside from work on the construction site, the volunteers took part in in-depth cultural experience exchanges. These exchanges are key for relationship building and offer an opportunity to share best practices and modern world trends, especially in the sphere of education and sustainable development. Cultural workshops, community talks, and shared master classes helped the team better understand the locals and their needs and dreams.

Due in part to the village’s remote location, its inhabitants still follow very old traditions like chhaupadi despite the fact that it has lost popularity in more central regions of Nepal. Nevertheless, the schoolchildren and their parents are very motivated – though having very low income, they save money to purchase mobile phones with some hoping and working to have their own computers.

The village has major potential – they have electricity, which makes the school-to-be ready for the second step of the Acronis Schools Initiative – organizing a computer lab there. Acronis believes that knowing IT basics is essential in the modern world both for personal, economical, and social opportunities and for eliminating the digital divide. Several Acronis schools already have laptops for children and teachers, but these resources are in short supply. You can donate or contact foundation@acronis.org to support the digitalization of Acronis schools and help more people get access to knowledge and the web.

Construction work is scheduled for completion by September 2020. The villagers have already invited Acronis and its partners to participate in the festive opening ceremony. If you would like to join the Acronis team for this celebratory event and support the school, apply at foundation@acronis.org.

All of the travel-related expenses for the group were covered by Acronis and the team, themselves. All the funds raised for the school go directly to its construction.