Example 4: Website content

This is an example of substantive editing. It is drawn from a website reconstruction project undertaken by Technical & Business Editing Limited. The customer was a small charity, Kangchenjunga School Project, which operates in Nepal. The text shown below is from the original "Aims" page of the website, although the aims themselves were hard to discern.

The purpose of the page is to describe what the charity does — information that is critical to potential donors. Accordingly, the text was edited substantially, as shown, and some of the content was moved to other pages. The result is a clear, concise statement of the charity's activities, plus the key points of its underlying philosophy.

Original text [538 words]

Aims of the Kangchenjunga School Project

"4th" World Conditions

Nepal, in addition to being a favoured destination for adventure travellers, is classified as one of the least developed of Third World Nations and the Kangchenjunga region is even undeveloped by third world standards. Due in part to the remote, rugged roadless terrainness of the area, and to bureaucratic problems inherent in the region, Kangchenjunga has traditionaly fallen through the cracks. The area recieves few if any services from the Nepalese government, nor from large International non-governmental Organizations.

Since its beginning in 1990, it has been the approach of the Kangchenjunga School Project to address the basic needs of the area by focusing on educational and health issues. Long term goals of the KSP project have been to introduce and support environmentally sustainable practices into the community at large.

Low Standards

Traditional education has many shortcommings which commonly occur in village Nepal. Often there is a high rate of teacher absenteeism and poor teacher performance, as the teachers are often Hindu, and the students are Tibetan or Sherpas. Culturally distanced, there appears little active engagement in the outcome or welfare of the students. It is twice as likely for a women to have no education at all, with Tibetan women being at the bottom of the educational track.

Medical facilities are also poor. The clinic in Taplejung only offers a very limited care, and the nearest hospital which performs operations is another gruelling six day from there. Even if a sick person were physically able to endure being transported on someone's back in a straw basket, most likely they could not afford the ten or twenty dollars to cover the cost of the journey. As a results of these obstacles, most diseases were allowed to run their course, and villagers accepted the outcome.

Schools and Health Clinics

With these problems in mind, the Kangchenjunga School Project built a combined school and health clinic at the village of Ghunsa in 1990, and a second in Folay four years later. The introduction of these two small clinics has been largely successful in meeting the health-care needs of roughly 1000 inhabitants in the Kangchenjunga region. Medical intervention has resulted in saving numerous lives.

Improvement of water systems has also reduced the incidence of diarrheal diseases, a leading cause of death in infants. Clean water is critical to minimize chronic parasitic infections resulting in impaired immune systems in both adults and children. KSP also has projects underway to train local women to be able to provide maternal and women's health care. A network of solar and wind powered vaccine refrigerators is also helping provide medical care in even the most remote villages. Other programs involve constuction of a girls dormintory at Lelep, and a pre-school education program.

Basic Needs

•  The basic needs as defined by the World
    Health Organisation (W.H.O) are:
•  Access to clean drinking water
•  Consumption of adequate caloric intake to
    meet energy requirements
•  Access to basic health-care that includes
    childhood vaccinations
•  Access to learning basic skills of reading,
    writing and computation

This website contains a description of various projects undertaken by the Kangchenjunga School Project, as brielfy mentioned above, in an effort to meet these needs.

Edited text [114 words]

What we do

KSP pursues its mission of promoting education, health, and environmental sustainability in the Kangchenjunga region of north-eastern Nepal.

This mission translates into specific projects - building schools, training health-care workers, installing vaccine fridges, etc - many of which have been successfully completed.

Which project?

KSP identifies opportunities for projects through its established rapport with the people of Kangchenjunga. Often a project begins as a request from a village. We initiate a project only after extensive consultation with the villagers concerned. We need to be sure that a project will benefit - and be supported by - the village.

Small is beautiful

KSP is a small, grass-roots organisation. Being small enables us to remain close to the local people and to choose appropriate projects. We employ local villagers on our projects and take care not to stretch their capabilities. It is not in the village's interests if we draw labour away from essential tasks, such as planting crops and tending animals.

We are realistic about how difficult it is to actually make a difference. Building schools and clinics is relatively easy. Gaining acceptance for new ideas and advancing a culture are more difficult. Progress can be made in only tiny steps.

We believe that success is getting people to help themselves, not having white people distribute western solutions. We measure success by how much local people support a project.