UNews - Janelle Pritchard

Founder of Uphill Both Ways to receive this year’s Young Alumnus Achievement Award

caroline.zentner — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 17:30:15 +0000

Janelle Pritchard (BN ’12), recipient of this year’s Young Alumnus Achievement Award, wants to reassure new alumni not to worry if they don’t have everything in their lives planned out.

“For me, the biggest thing I’ve come to appreciate is that you don’t need to have it all figured out. Just trust in the journey,” says Pritchard.

That approach led her to establish Uphill Both Ways, a non-profit organization that has helped people in Nepal by funding the building of new schools and a hydroelectric plant and providing school supplies for hundreds of children. Plans are underway to build another school and, during her last visit in October 2015, Uphill Both Ways also set up health camps in conjunction with a hospital in Bhaktapur. Pritchard hopes to continue this work by bringing Canadian doctors and nurses to Nepal one day.

Janelle Pritchard (BN '12) is this year's recipient of the Young Alumnus Achievement Award.

“Uphill Both Ways has taken on a life of its own. It all happened very naturally. A lot of the time I just feel like I’m along for the ride,” she says. “All this work in Nepal has happened just because I’ve been open to opportunity.”

Her dedication and leadership in founding and sustaining Uphill Both Ways has inspired others and has made a difference in the world. Her passion for helping the people of Nepal is infectious. For these reasons and more, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge Alumni Association (ULAA) is pleased to honour Pritchard with the Young Alumnus Achievement Award for 2017.

“We are very proud to recognize Janelle with the Young Alumnus Achievement Award,” says Randy Kobbert (BMgt ’86), president of the ULAA. “Not only does she demonstrate excellence in her career as a nurse, she has shown true leadership in her humanitarian work in Nepal.”

“I was definitely shocked,” says Pritchard. “When I found out, I was honoured. But it seems kind of crazy because there are a lot of really incredible people out there.”

Pritchard, who works as an operating room nurse at Rocky View Hospital in Calgary, was born and raised in Lethbridge. After graduating from high school, she wanted to spend a year backpacking in Australia. When she was preparing for the trip, her father told her about a hiking trip to Nepal being organized by a friend.

“He suggested doing some father-daughter bonding in the Himalayas and starting my trip off with a little bit of hiking in Nepal before I went to Australia,” she says. “The Nepal trip was kind of a fluke chance.”

The trip proved to be life-changing and Nepal and its people captured a place in her heart. A teacher in their hiking group expressed interest in seeing the school in a village and their trekking guide, who knew someone involved with the school, arranged a visit.

“They took us to this little shack. There were a couple of benches that the older kids could sit on, but the younger kids were sitting on the floor,” says Pritchard. “They had an old chalkboard but they couldn’t afford chalk. They had nothing. Seeing that was eye-opening. At the end of our trip, we all just pitched in a bit of money and we were able to buy tons of school supplies and then pay for a couple of men to carry it all on their backs up to this village. I saw how easy it was to make change and make a difference in somebody else’s life. We were told the headmaster cried when the stuff arrived. Seeing that impact just kind of sparked things.”

Pritchard has made four more trips to Nepal, one of them a few months after the earthquake in April 2015. Uphill Both Ways remains a small organization of five people, consisting of family members, friend Drew Andreachuk, and a contact in Nepal.

“Our contact on the ground, he was my original trekking guide, and it’s because of him that all this is possible,” says Pritchard. “Getting to be a part of their world for a little bit is pretty magical. I think my relationship with Nepal is going to be a lifelong one. It’s become my home away from home.”

To determine where the greatest need exists, the guide holds community meetings to figure out what’s most needed and if the community is willing to help by providing labour. Little by little, Uphill Both Ways has built trust within the Nepalese communities.

The skills and knowledge she gained during her time at the U of L have given her a foundation and proven their value halfway around the world.

“This isn’t a place where you come to get all the answers; it’s where you come to learn how to ask the big questions and to understand why they matter,” says Pritchard.

Taking the high road

trevor.kenney — Tue, 10 May 2011 18:02:28 +0000

Mountain roads in Nepal aren't really meant for vehicles. The narrow, winding and pothole-ridden paths that connect Nepal's remote villages to the outside world are precarious at best and can often be downright treacherous, looming dangerously above deep canyons without so much as a guardrail to prevent disastrous slips over the side.

If a vehicle going up one such road meets another coming down, someone has to go in reverse until the duo reaches a point in the road that's wide enough for one of them to pull over and let the other pass.

Andrew Andreachuk and Janelle Pritchard work to bring meaningful change to Nepal's mountain villages.

Janelle Pritchard, a third-year ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge bachelor of nursing student, and Andrew Andreachuk, a fifth-year combined bachelor of science/bachelor of education student, know a little something about hair-raising Nepalese road trips. They made quite a few in the early spring of 2010, while on their first official excursion to Nepal under the auspices of the not-for-profit agency they founded last year – Uphill Both Ways.

Uphill Both Ways Education and Relief Fund (the agency's official name) delivers educational and health-care supplies to impoverished communities in Nepal. The agency is the brainchild of Pritchard, who in 2005 saw first-hand just how far a few hundred Canadian dollars could go in a country where many people go without much of anything at all.

Pritchard was backpacking through Nepal after graduating high school, trekking with a group of cohorts through various mountain passes from one small village to another. Little did Pritchard know that what she saw in those villages, and what she ultimately decided to do about it, would change her life forever – as well as the lives of hundreds of Nepalese schoolchildren.

"Our guide had a connection to the school in one of the villages where we stayed," Pritchard recalls. "We asked if we could go in and take a look at it, and what we saw was absolutely heartbreaking."

Pritchard describes the schoolhouse she saw that day as a "dilapidated little shack." The one-room facility had a couple of rickety benches for older students to sit on, but younger children in the class were relegated to the floor. There were no books, no pencils, no materials of any kind except the remnants of a broken chalkboard, which remained unused because the school didn't have funds to buy chalk.

Both Andreachuk and Pritchard developed deep bonds with the local population.

"It was tragic," says Pritchard. "We were told that children as young as seven would walk for up to an hour to go to that school. To see the conditions they dealt with when they got there – it was overwhelming."

At the end of the trip the trekkers decided to chip in $20 each to buy supplies for the school. Between 10 of them they were able to fill the trunk of a taxicab with supplies, and pay wages for two men to haul everything they'd purchased into the remote village on foot.

For Pritchard, from that point on there was no looking back. When her younger sister made the same trip to Nepal after her own high school graduation, Pritchard teamed up with her to raise $4,700 that ultimately bought desks, benches and a load of supplies for another school in need. The snowball had starting rolling, and by 2009 Pritchard was itching to go back to Nepal to contribute in an even bigger way.

Enter Andrew Andreachuk, a classmate of Pritchard's who was ready to help take the project to the next level.

"I really wanted to get away somewhere for a while and do something completely different. When I started talking to Janelle about the things she was doing in Nepal, I knew I had to be a part of it," says Andreachuk.

Pritchard and Andreachuk began to lay the groundwork for their visit to Nepal months before they departed, organizing a variety of fundraisers and starting the wheels in motion to legally establish their agency as a not-for-profit organization in Canada. By the end of 2009, they'd raised more than $17,000 via a benefit concert, a silent auction, through the sale of handmade Nepalese scarves and hats, and through private donations.

Two university organizations, Rotaract and the U of L Climbing Club, lent momentum to the cause, planning and co-hosting the Everest Challenge – a weekend event where climbers took donations for scaling the height of Mount Everest over the course of two days.

Every penny that Uphill Both Ways receives goes directly into a bank account in Kathmandu and is spent on essential school materials. When Andreachuk and Pritchard arrived in Nepal in March of 2010, they had enough money to buy sufficient supplies for three schools, and build a two-room addition to one particular school in desperate need of expansion and repair. They carried out the mission over the course of two months, and transformed the educational experience of more than 500 students. Still, when you hear Pritchard and Andreachuk tell the tale of their trip, it's difficult to assess if it was them or the children who benefited more from the visit.

"It's so hard to put into words," Andreachuk says of the experience. "Every moment you're there is mind blowing. These kids are so used to having nothing that they're absolutely thrilled with anything. A box of pencil crayons means the world to them."

"Still, they are so content with their lives. It's very humbling to be among them," Pritchard goes on to say. "The kids are thrilled that we're there, but so is the entire community. People come from all over to talk with us, and the visit becomes a huge event. We're building relationships and trust with the larger Nepalese community, which is really incredible."

Pritchard and Andreachuk had hardly set foot back on Canadian soil before they began to plan their next excursion. The next time Uphill Both Ways visits Nepal (spring 2012) the big goal will be to build an eight-room schoolhouse, thanks in part to a generous grant from the Rotary Club of Lethbridge. The new school will replace an old building that accommodated students in kindergarten through Grade 5 and expand classes to include children up to Grade 8. The change will save older children in the area a 45-minute walk to the next school – many of whom already walk close to an hour to attend school now. Total cost for the development project is $70,000, which includes paying salaries for three new teachers.

And as for the treacherous car rides to the remote villages where they do the work? Andreachuk and Pritchard don't mind. "It's funny how quickly you can get used to stuff like that," Andreachuk laughs. "You look out over the edge of a thousand-foot ravine and think, 'Ah – we're probably okay.'"

To learn more about Uphill Both Ways, visit: http://uphillbothways-edu-rel.blogspot.com/

This story first appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of SAM Magazine. For a look at SAM in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Rotaract looks to scale Everest

trevor.kenney — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:34:34 +0000

In an effort to raise money for a good cause, ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge students and others will be climbing Mt. Everest this weekend.

Well, sort of.

On Saturday, Feb. 27, the U of L Climbing Club and U of L Rotaract Club will co-host The Everest Challenge, which will see participants try to climb the equivalent height of Mt. Everest at the Ascent Climbing Centre, located in the 1st Choice Savings Centre for Sport and Wellness.

"The club has been trying to raise awareness of climbing as a sport for a while now," says club president David Cassidy. "This seemed like a good way to do that. Then my dad mentioned that if we were going to do it, why not raise some money at the same time?"

Ascent Climbing Centre has donated the full use of the climbing wall for the day to run this event. The U of L Climbing Club and Rotaract Club will recruit 13 teams of three people to climb. Each team will to pay a $50 sign up fee and are encouraged to get pledges for their team.

Starting at noon on Saturday,Feb. 27, each team will be expected to complete 45 climbs per team or 15 climbs per person. If each team completes the challenge we will have collectively climbed the elevation of Mount Everest from sea level.

The event will raise money and awareness for "Uphill Both Ways," an organization created by a local Lethbridge family.

The organization is an education relief fund that is non-denominational, not for profit, and focused on education and health care development for children in communities of Nepal. U of L students Janelle Pritchard and Drew Andreachuk are both in Nepal working hard to help this cause with money that they have already raised.

UNews - Janelle Pritchard

Founder of Uphill Both Ways to receive this year’s Young Alumnus Achievement Award

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Taking the high road

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Rotaract looks to scale Everest

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