Sponsor a student / The rules
How sponsorship works
Five steps, from the day a student is enrolled in Nepal to the day you decide to stop. The protections in it are the point of it, so they are written out rather than assumed.
01 / Before you arrive
How a student is enrolled
MRN field staff work in the districts where the organisation already runs relief. They identify students whose schooling stopped or is about to, record what it would cost to keep them in school, and take consent from a guardian in person.
- A guardian's consent is recorded before anything about a student is written down for publication.
- A student's record is published only when an administrator other than the person who enrolled them approves it.
- Until then the record exists for staff and for nobody else, not as a draft page, not as a preview.
- Costs are entered item by item: fees, uniform, books, transport, food, each with its own target and period.
02 / Your gift
How the money moves
You give by card, PayPal or bank transfer. Your gift is credited to the student you chose, in one ledger, on the day it clears. Nothing is pooled quietly and nothing is re-allocated without a record.
- The processing fee the card network or PayPal charges is shown as its own line against the same student, so you can see the whole of what your gift cost to move.
- A payment in Nepal is requested by one staff member and approved by a different one before the money leaves. The database refuses to record it otherwise.
- Every payment is entered with a receipt, in rupees and in dollars, at the exchange rate used on the day.
- The ledger is append-only. A mistake is corrected by posting the opposite entry, so the correction is on the record as well.
03 / In return
What you are shown
Sponsorship here is accounted for, not narrated. You get the school's own reporting and the organisation's own receipts.
- Progress reports as the school issues them: term, grade, attendance, results and the teacher's comment.
- Updates written by field staff and reviewed by somebody other than their author before you see them.
- Itemised spending on the student you sponsor, each line with the receipt behind it.
- A running position for that student: received, fees, spent, and what MRN is still holding for them.
04 / Contact
Letters are moderated and calls are hosted
Contact between a sponsor and a student goes through MRN. That is the rule, and it does not have exceptions for long-standing sponsors.
- You can write a letter from your sponsor area. A staff member who did not write it reads it before it is delivered, and you can see whether it is awaiting review, approved, delivered or rejected, with the reason.
- A reply from a student is entered by their guardian or by staff, reviewed, then shown to you.
- You can ask for a call. Staff schedule it, a named staff member hosts it and stays on it, and the joining details reach you only once that host is assigned.
- You are never given a student's phone number, email address, home address, village or school, and they are never given yours.
05 / Your commitment
Pausing and ending
A sponsorship is a commitment to a school year, not a contract. You can pause or end it yourself, from your own dashboard, without explaining why.
- Pausing stops any recurring gift and keeps your access to the student's record.
- Ending closes your access to new reports and photographs. Your giving history and receipts stay available to you.
- A student can have more than one sponsor, so ending yours does not leave their year unfunded by itself. Their open needs go back into the directory.
06 / Child protection
What never reaches a sponsor
These are not preferences. They are enforced in the software that serves this site: the private columns are never selected by a sponsor-facing query, and identity documents are staff-only whatever anybody sets.
No surname, no date of birth
Students are shown by first name, age from their birth year, district and grade. The surname and the date of birth exist in the record and are read by staff only.
No village, school or address
A student is placed by district, which is a region, and by the disaster that affected them. The village, the school name and the family's address are never published or shown to sponsors.
No phone numbers or email addresses
Not the student's, not the guardian's, not the school's. Everything goes through MRN, which means a sponsorship can be ended without leaving a private channel open behind it.
No unreviewed words or photographs
Letters, updates, reports and photographs are all read or looked at by a second person before anybody outside staff sees them. Photographs are re-encoded when they are uploaded, which removes the location recorded by the camera.
The full policy, including how to report a concern, is on the safeguarding page.
07 / Next
Choose a student
The directory shows every published student, ordered by how little of their costed year has been funded.