Stop Making Paper Orphans of Nepal Children

Greetings from Nepal. 

If you've been following this project you already know that Orchid Garden has created an exceptional educational program for the poorest of children. The results of that education are evident in how well children are learning and how much they love to come to Orchid Garden every day. There's 170 children in regular attendance and if we had room, we could double in size tomorrow, but we are totally out of room on the rented land we now occupy. 

That hasn't stopped Orchid Garden from expanding however, we've just had to find new ways to create new Orchid Gardens and this month, the first village-based education program using the OGN model opened at Her Farm (another Mountain Fund project on GlobalGiving).

We started by sending two young women from the village to Orchid Garden for three months of hands-on training with the teachers at Orchid Garden so they could learn how OGN runs the program and the innovative teaching methods they use. 

Next, with a group of volunteers we set about the task of creating an Orchid Garden-like classroom in the village. The photos and attached video link tell that story. We are running 3 classes a day right now with as many as 80 children attending. Classes are geared toward different age groups with the youngest children in the morning, before regular school in the village school, then after school for somewhat older children and early evenings for the oldest youth. 

We'd love to be able to replicate the success in education that Orchid Garden is providing to poor children and this is the first step in creating more "Orchids" as founder Bina Basnet calls them. I hope you will help us as we work to codify the teaching methods used at Orchid Garden and train more young women to reach out in villages with the OGN method. 

Links:

• The village school