By Lisa Lyons | US Director
The name "Educate the Children" clearly indicates our roots as an organization that strives to improve both access to and quality of educational opportunities for kids. Although we quite early on expanded our work to support the children's mothers and families through our women's empowerment and sustainable agricultural development programming, our children's education work is still of critical importance to our mission and to the well-being of families in rural Nepal.
All three of our program areas are integrated and mutually supportive. For example, helping mothers gain the skills to earn more money ensures that children won't have to be taken out of school because they need to work or because their families cannot pay for the necessary supplies and fees.
In March, before the New Year break*, I visited nine of the schools with which ETC and local partner organization Save the Earth are currently working. The children and teachers alike seemed very glad to be steadily back to school after having been in and out more than once during course of the pandemic. The headmasters also expressed sincere gratitude for ETC's very practical and useful support in the relatively short time we've been working with these particular schools. As you can see from the photos, the buildings themselves appear to be for the most part in fairly good structural condition - meaning for example that the walls are solid - but there is still plenty of work to be done. Headmasters/teachers and ETC staff work together to establish the top priorities for each school, including such things construction of toilet facilities, provision of furniture, and provision of educational supplies/materials.
As for non-tangibles, the most important thing ETC does is to provide training for the teachers, who will otherwise have no opportunities for continuing professional development. The overarching goal is to help them move away from traditional rote-based instructional practices to more interactive techniques that encourage critical thinking and problem-solving among the students.
We are honored to have earned the trust and respect of so many educational professionals, parents, and students over the course of more than three decades of work in Nepal's schools. And, as always, we are grateful to friends and supporters like you who make it all possible. Thank you!
* Spring is transition time for Nepal's school year, which typically ends in early March and starts anew after the Nepali New Year in mid-April. In 2022, because of pandemic-related delays, the previous school year ended a bit later and the new school year will start a bit later.
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