Help 370 Nepali Children Access Quality Education

Lots has been going on at Kushadevi thanks to the generous support of our Global Giving donors! Thank you for continuing your donations - we couldn’t help the children gain better access to and quality of education at Kushadevi without you. Thank you. Here are a few of the things your money has contributed to...

Since May we have been working hard to ensure that as many teachers are trained in 'Creative Learning Techniques' as we can. And it is now paying off. 27 of our teaching staff have been working with our trainers from the renowned Rato Bangla Foundation, including 3 full day workshops and monthly 'in-class' consultations and support to put what has been learned into effective and regular practice in the classroom. Children are showing increased interest, especially in maths, where games and exercises have become a regular part of the their learning experience. When we asked Dixit from Class 7 he told us "I like the puzzles we have to do, I do them with my friends and we nearly always get them right now!" 

Ride for Life, our bike riding programme, has seen more that 50 young people riding in Kushadevi. Girls especially are enjoying the higher status this has given them within the village. The bikes in school have come with many benefits; from PE classes and fitness, to topic based learning. One of our young riders, Priti, tells us a good example of this: Priti’s younger sister (aged 10) was stopped by her parents to attend school last year so that she could work in the family street shop. However, this term they are insisting that she go back to school as she will get to use the bike, which not only helps her get to school but also is useful at home for errands and for the shop to deliver items to the surrounding homes. Once the parents understood the benefits, their perception of the school and of education for their daughter changed, ensuring another girl now has the opportunity of a quality school education who otherwise would have been in trapped in child labour. 

Younger children, who are not yet able to ride the bikes have been learning the mechanics as part of their science learning, another form of creative learning that gets the children excited about school, and increases their understanding of mechanics from a young age.

With our older students we have also devised and facilitated a number of events including drama performances by the children and local actors about the consequences of Gender Discrimination at school and in the home, and steps to take to overcome it. Performances have also included the difficulties that some of the children face in learning at school, and we have used the events to work with school management and teachers to find ways to resolve these issues. This has included improving toilet facilities and increasing the number of ‘tiffin’ support we give to students, who otherwise go a whole school day without food.

As we previously reported, this Model School Programme is being taken into a number of local schools, 3 in particular have been working hard to replicate our model, and our team of teachers and school management have visited to consult on how they make the improvements needed to ensure their schools become a central heartbeat of the community they serve.

So a massive Thank You! We couldn’t do any of this without the support of all of you. In order top continue running Kushadevi we need ongoing support, so a huge thank you to those of you who have set up a regular donations. This helps us to sustain our operations at Kushadevi. Please spread the word to see if others might be interested in helping 370 children at Kushadevi School. Again, Thank you.

Links:

• our Facebook page
• Our Website