The little school that's teaching a whole village.

An astonishing thing happened recently at our little school. Five teachers, including the principal came by and asked if we might send our volunteer English teachers over to the community school once a day, during the teachers lunch hour, to teach them all English. This was a landmark moment. We've kept a bit of distance between ourselves and local school the past two years due to bitter political infighting on the school management committee that we wanted to stay totally out of. It's crazy, I know, that such infighting over politics takes place at a grade school, but this is Nepal and all things are political here. At the same time we kept distance, we let it be known that whenever the management of the school was ready to put a stop to the fighting, we were ready to cooperate and help. Things seem to be cooling off and moving in a better direction now so all the teachers are keen to have us teach them English. One or two can speak a small amount of very broken English. It's critical these teachers learn though as the statistics for their students are horrid. Out of every 100 children enrolled in a rural school like this, 50 will leave school at the end of the 5th grade, which is the highest class in this village. For the 50 who do leave, we have to get them all the education and skills we possibly can while they are still in school as it may well represent the extent of thier life's education. If we can improve the school, we can hope to retain more students as well. Out of 100 who enroll, only 3 will make it all the way to the 10th grade. At the end of the 10th grade there's a huge, final exam required to get a School Leaving Certificate, which is the same as high school graduation. Without that certificate, which is sometimes called the "Iron Gate", there's no future for jobs. Rural schools like this typically pass just 28% of the students in the SLC exams.  

The same teachers, just one week after starting English classes showed up in our brand new electronic classroom asking to learn how to use computers too. So now we have two sessions with them each day, one for English and one for computers. This could be a huge turning point for the village and the school. 

The Breakfast Club at Her Farm doesn't star Judd Nelson or Molly Ringwald and certainly isn't about a bunch of kids spending time in detention, though I admit that was a good movie in its time. In the village of Mankhu, The Breakfast Club is quite different. We have students who come early, hours before their regular school time just to study English. The regular school in the village starts at 10am, but these students show up as early as 7am for English classes as they are that eager to learn. Many of them don't have enough food at home, or they arrive at Her Farm so early, we were concerned about them getting a good breakfast so they'd have the energy to study all day as we know a great many of them will not have any lunch. Unlike our western schools, there isn't a lunch program at the village school in Mankhu. Students must pack a lunch, which they call tiffin, and we see very few children with lunch packed for school. So, we began the breakfast club. At 7am we have a good hot breakfast ready at Her Farm and all the children who have come for lessons first enjoy a good meal, then attend English class. We know we've given them a good start for the day and served up a hearty meal that will hold them throughout the day. Attendance has gone up for classes as a result, especially amongst the girls. In many Nepali families, the men and boys eat first, the women next and last to eat are the girls. That means for many of the young girls it's slim pickens for breakfast and we think that's one reason so many young girls are joining the breakfast club at Her Farm.