The Girls Education Project in Rural Nepal

Twelve girls from the rural villages of Nepal took the final secondary exam through this project three weeks ago. Eight years of our hard work they are finally being noticed. We are delightful and let’s wish the girls a brighter future ahead.

Further, eleven girls will take the exam next year and the following. There are one-hundred and seven girls being supported to receive a formal education through the project. We support the girls because girls in the communities are denied to an education for cultural and traditional reasons.

All the remaining girls in the scheme have stepped up a class, and their new curriculum will start from 23^rd of April 2019. To ensure they attend school regularly and do better in the class, we will be providing a bicycle to fifty girls who currently don’t have one. We will also be proving a fresh set of study support package in a couple of days. These activities will cost around £4,000/$5,400.

There are more girls in the villages currently not in the scheme, but they need our support to continue their education. To sponsor a girl for a year costs £60/$80 only. 

Even though, it is a small scale project it has been very successful to change the life of many girls in rural Nepal.

Best wishes

Krit and the entire NVF Team

The report covers the following activities- merging of the two girls’ education projects, the girl’s club, the extra tuition classes, the study support materials and the financial. 

‘The Girls’ Higher Education Project’ has been merged with ‘The Girls’ Education Project’ because the Nepalese government has changed the education policy and the 10+2 (intermediate) courses are under the compulsory higher secondary education scheme. Now, the 10+2 courses will be taught in secondary school as well as in the collages. It will be easier for us to manage the project. Hopefully, the course fees will be cheaper for the 10+2 students in the coming days.

We are delighted to announce that a Girl’s Club in Bhagawatpur has been established for the empowerment of girls in the communities. The club has five committee members including of the head of the jurisdiction of the municipality, part-time staff and twenty-five members. The committee will monitor the club activities and advice accordingly. The main objectives of the club are to raise awareness about the educational rights of children in the communities, advocate them so that they will have an enabling environment to become what they want to be and, create an opportunity to learn life-long skills. The staff and members will have a regular monthly meeting as well as a help desk to deal with urgencies.

We have hired three teachers (Maths, Nepali and English) to provide additional classes to the girls so that they can obtain a better result in the final exam. All the girls in the scheme are from poor and Dalit families, and they are not supervised at home. Consequently, they don’t get a good result in the final exams and, without it they can’t study further. We are hopeful that the girls will benefit from the class significantly. 

Seventy-seven per cent of the girls in the scheme have a satisfactory school attendance, and twenty per cent have an average in the quarter. Similarly, four hundred and thirty-seven notebooks, two hundred and eighty-five pens and six bicycles have provided to the girls in the quarter.

Four staff has been working to manage the projects, and so far £4,825 pounds have been expended on both projects. The spending includes staff salary, tuition fees, study support materials, bicycles and others.

The annual Curry and Beer event- every year we organise a curry and beer event to raise funds to support the project. But this year, we have decided to do it differently- we are requesting our supporters to cook curry at their own home, invite friends and collect donations to support the project. We are here to help you in the planning of the event, so if you think that you can do it, then please contact me by email- krit.sharma@nvf.org.uk

Best wishes

Krit Sharma

Nepal Village Foundation

The following project activities were carried out during the quarter;

Monitoring of the girls in the scheme to improve the school attendance- Thirty-five girls in the scheme have achieved a 100% school attendance comparing to only six or seven in the previous months or years. Similarly, 52 girls have a school attendance of 80% and only six girls have below 50%. Radha and Nirmala, the two interns, have been working hard to achieve the result.

None of the girls is allowed to be absent from their school without permission from the interns. Despite that many girls are absent for various reasons. Hence, Radha and Nirmala visit all the schools randomly on a regular basis, and if they find any of the girls is absent, then they visit their home. We believe the monitoring system is working better than ever since before.

Study support package- we have provided plenty of notebooks, pens, school-bag and a bicycle to the girls in the first quarter, so only a few girls needed some extra in this quarter. Mainly the seven girls in higher secondary schooling needed a bicycle, textbooks and the other stuff.  

Improving the quality of education- we are working with the head of local municipality to explore the possibility to partner the local schools and municipality. It is to improve the quality of education in local schools by improving the teaching and learning methods.

The management of the local schools, teachers, pupils and their parents are not taking the education seriously due to many difficulties and differences. If the project is feasible and the municipality provides sufficient funding, then we will be working to eliminate the difficulties and differences and create a better environment for teaching and learning. The local community schools are mainly used by girls, so most of the girls in the community will benefit from the project.

An opportunity to study higher secondary schooling- we have begun to sponsor girls from poor and Dalit families to study higher secondary schooling from this year. Seven girls have been selected for the scheme, and they are attending their college regularly from the last month. We have partnered with two local colleges, and the colleges are offering a 36% discount on the tuition fees to all our girls. A project has been created on GlobalGiving for the sponsorship.

To sponsor a girl in higher secondary schooling costs £550 per year (£50/month). Similarly, to sponsor a girl in secondary school costs £65 (£6/month) and in primary schooling costs £50 (£5/month).

Please sponsor a girl today and give the girls in rural Nepal an opportunity to receive an education.

Links:

• The Girls Higher Secondary Project

The financial year ends on the 16^th of July in Nepal. We have expended 725,572 rupees (£5,573 or US$8,136) in total in the year on the Girls’ Education Project. 105 girls from the poorest of the poor families have been supported through the project to receive a formal education in Mahadeva municipality of Saptari district, Nepal. It means £53 per girl for the year.

Breaking down the cost, we have expended £746 on study materials (£7/per girl), £1,398 on uniform (£14/per girl), £140 on extra tuition and exam fees, £280 on bicycles and £573 on awareness raising activities. Similarly, £1,542 was expended on project implementation, monitoring and reporting, and £902 on support to the partner organisation towards admin, bills and governance.

The study support package includes notebooks, pens, extra tuition and exam fees, a bicycle if the school is far to walk, uniform (a pair of trousers, skirt, shirt, socks, shoes, sandals, hat and scarf) and all the support. Textbooks are provided by the government, and there is no schooling fee in the local community schools.   

Currently, a full-time senior project assistant and three full-time interns are managing the project, and monitor all the girls to ensure they attend school regularly. The girls come from ten different villages and go twelve different local schools. The project assistant and the interns visit all the schools and villages regularly, so it’s not an easy job. They also report the progress to the chair and board of trustees monthly.

Although the majority of girls are now completing the final year of secondary schooling through the project, they are not progressing towards higher secondary schooling. It is because they achieve a poorer grade in the final exams which doesn’t allow them to do so and the culture of teenage teen marriages. Therefore, from this year’s and forward our focus will be given on how the girls achieve a better grade along with others. We strongly believe that a better grade will motivate some girls to progress towards higher secondary schooling.    

Nepal Village Foundation’s board of trustees are now considering to sponsor interested girls from the poor families to study further, but barely any girl meets the criteria. Hence, new project activities, such as an extra tuition class before and after the school hours for every girl will be considered to achieve the goal.

Carefully looking at the inflation rate and the new project activities, our prediction for the 2018/19 is £60 or US$88 per girl. If you are sponsoring a girl by giving regularly, then please adjust your donation accordingly, and if you are not, then please sponsor a girl today. Your donation is making a huge and real difference to improve the lives of disadvantaged girls and women in rural Nepal. 

Three weeks ago the year-end class test was taken and, we confirm that all the 106 girls in the scheme have stepped up a class. To prepare the girls for the next class, we have provided a new set of uniform, new school bag and sufficient study materials. Four ladies from the village have stitched all the 106 set of uniform. The ladies made sufficient income from the job that they would normally make in three months. The ladies are grateful to get the job.

Similarly, 780 notebooks, 297 pens and 106 school bags that we provided to the girls two weeks ago purchased from the local suppliers. In total, we spent 143,823 rupees (£1028) to provide all of these. The girls will get a new set of winter uniform as well in November and sufficient notebooks and pens every quarterly.

To ensure all the 106 girls attend school regularly, we have hired three new full-time volunteers. Now, all together we have four staff to monitor the girls. The three new volunteers are Radha, Kiran and Renu and Renu is one of our ex-pupils. They completed their secondary schooling last year. The three volunteers will cost 180,000 rupees (£1286) annually.

The belief that women in the community can only work in-house and field has to come to an end because it demotivates girls in the community to retrieve a formal education. We strongly believe that creating a job opportunity for girls in the community will create a dynamic environment in which it will be easier for the girls to retrieve a formal education. Creating such an opportunity for girls in the community will give them a real feel to use of an education which hopefully will create a realisation for the need of an education.

Over the next months and years, we will be working to reduce the gap between parents of the girls and teachers. Parents of the girls rarely visit the school to see how well they are doing. We will be persuading the parents to visit the school regularly with our staff and make them involve in and show an interest. By doing that will develop a pressure on the teachers as well as to teach pupils better which will contribute to improving the quality of teaching and learning.