Improve education for Nepali girls and minorities

Recently, we observed the two-year anniversary of the devastating earthquakes that rocked Nepal in April 2015. After helping more than a dozen schools rebuild damaged classrooms, we are turning our attention to teacher training.

We believe that quality classroom instruction is critical to school success. This is also an area where we can make a real difference for schools in rural areas where resources are especially scarce. Our goal is for every school to have a library full of children’s books, with teachers and parents taking time in school and at home to read to their children.

In the past few months, we have refurbished classrooms with appropriate materials: books, book racks, carpets, reading tables and cushions. This was part of a pilot program to encourage teachers read aloud to their students—something that we take for granted in the West but that is simply not customary in Nepal.

Most of the schools we support do not have a library. Not because the earthquake destroyed the books; the schools never had them to begin with. To supply children’s literature in quake-affected schools, we’re working with the Rato Bangala Foundation and the children’s book publisher Rato Bangala Kitab to supply our schools with Nepali-language stories.

Finally, after we completed the first round of our latest teacher training program in March, we’re conducting a basic assessment of the impact of children’s literature. We plan to use the data we collect to refine our literacy training.

Thank you for your ongoing support to make programs like this possible.