Literacy and Livelihoods for 445 Women in Nepal

This is continuation of our mother tongue literacy and livelihoods program.

What we wanted to do

• Enable 50 Limbu women to become literate in their own language using their traditional script  
• Encourage parents to support the use of Limbu in local schools
• Celebrate and raise awareness about Limbu language from with different segment of the community

What we did

• Orientation Program for project staff with participating Limbu villages.  Each village agreed to provide a suitable space for the participants to meet and select a local respected literate member of the community to be trained as the teacher for the literacy class.
• Two Limbu women who had graduated from High School received a five days training to teach adults to become literate.
•   We opened two centers with 47 women and even the government sent officials to look at the classes The community asked us to close the classes over the monsoon so they can prepare the fields and plant rice. As soon as the harvest is in classes will reopen.  We will provide refresher training to the teachers just before the classes resume in early September.

What happened

• 47 Limbu women can read and write simple texts in Limbu
• Limbu communities are aware of the importance of developing their own language
• Two local primary schools began mother tongue-based multilingual education

Next

Other Limbu communities have asked us to provide a program to help Limbu women to learn Nepali as well as there own language and implement income generation activities with the poorer families in the community.  Government offices asked us to provide technical support to introduce Limbu mother as a medium of instruction in beginning grades in local primary schools.  It would be wonderful if we can gather the resources to get these projects of the ground.

Thank you for your continue support to this project. Please continue check our website, https://www.ldcnepal.org/ for updates.

In June, I visited Limbu project to conduct a MLE awareness project launch the Limbu language book "Hinjapichhu" which means children in Limbu. The book is a collection of local folk stories and songs for children. Putting them in book means they can be shared wider community and literature transferred to the new generation.  This program was conducted in partnership with our Limbu partner NGO, Limbu Language Development Association (LiLDA).

Member of the Limbu community, primary schoolteachers, school management committees, NGO and District Education Office staff attended the MLE workshop and book launch.

Mrs. Bhawana Subba from LILDA joined me in running the workshop. As a result the 34 participants are more aware and committed to implementing mother tongue-based multilingual education.   Pert of the workshop was to teach the participants how to collect and edit oral literature from the Limbu community.

On the completion of the workshop the following comments were expressed: 

Parent Mrs. Asali Kumari Lawati:  "I want to see my children can speak, read and write in Limbu language as well they can able to use Nepali and English perfectly. I have no idea how it will work but as I heard mother tongue is key issue to provide quality education. I think parents are also need to be literate in mother tongue and Nepali language to support their children." 

Head teacher, Mr. Bhajendra Bahadur Lawati: "I want to tell all of you mother tongue must be used in education to provide quality education for all especially children from minority language speaking communities. My school will start to work and anticipating technical and management support from DEO and LDC-Nepal in future."

District Education Office Staff, Mr.Yegendra Khadka:  "I am very happy to see this kind of support from LiLDA and LDC-Nepal to introduce mother tongue in basic education. I would like to request you to assist us cover more schools. I will always ready to give my positive support to this programmes."

Looking ahead

Workshops like this help us to continue to understand the challenges for the community and local government to implement the use of mother tongue in basic education, these are: financial resources to meet their minimum requirements, developing a school-based curriculum, developing contextual teaching and learning materials and training teachers to use mother tongue as a medium of instruction.

Thank you for your continued support to this project. Please continue to check our website, http://www.ldcnepal.org/ for updates.