Training 1500 Teachers |Empowering 5000 Girls/Boys

Dear Friends,  With your support and contribution we have been able to make a positive transformation in the lives of young girls and boys through empowerment sessions on essential issues like menstruation health, personal hygiene, education for career building, child rights, and self-confidence building and, building family support.

Nora, 25 years old (Name changed), is one who has benefitted from the program. She is a primary school teacher now. Few years back she was a local girl empowerment facilitator for Girls Empowerment Session.

She shares her personal experience “Being a mentor for the young girls’ session gave me confidence, to speak about girl’s issues. For many females in our society, menstruation is one of the biggest challenges. I want to continue to be a mentor for the girls now that I am a teacher. Support them and advocate for menstruation hygiene, reach for sanitary pads and stop harmful practices.”

We work with local public school teachers and students to understand the unique need for the girls to attend school. Principal from one of the Secondary School at Bajura shares, “The most important transformation among the girls is that they have learned menstrual management. As a result, the number of girls’ attendance has increased. They would otherwise miss 5-6 days of class per month. We also provide free sanitary pads at our school since we recognize the need. This facility will definitely aid in the pursuit of education.

In the sessions, both boys and girls are engaged which aims to build a gender-balanced community and support one another in making positive changes in their community.

One of the male student from class-10 shares, “I felt extremely glad to learn from our senior sisters. This was completely new experience for me as a boy. The course taught me how to control my emotions as an adolescent, my responsibilities to my family and community, how to assist the eradication of discrimination, and how to stay joyful sharing and supporting. I feel more confident in myself after the session. I let go of the shyness that was holding me back."

We have been organizing empowerment sessions in Nepal’s most remote areas for young adolescents like them who are at a vulnerable age. With your support several young girls and boys were able to participate in the session and move on with confidence. Thank you for your unconditional support!

We would like to thank you and assure you that the donations that you have made have been put to the intended purposes, and will be in the future too. We have a young group of adolescents seeking similar action for which please share this project with your contacts and invite them to consider supporting this Himalayan project. We thank you for all that you have done for our project.

PHASE Nepal Team

 Dila (name changed), 28 years old is living a successful life as a teacher in Bichhya Secondary School, in Bichhya, Bajura one of the remotest places in Nepal. Right before that, she had worked as an active mentor of the Girls in the Empowerment implemented by PHASE Nepal supporting more than 350 girls and boys of her village. She shares her experience on how her life has changed after participating in PHASE's Girls empowerment program. Her involvement in the program made her more confident which enabled her to find a job by herself and continue to build her career.  When she remembers her life four years back, she was very worried about her career, her 2 children, and her painful experiences of living in oppressive traditions such as chhaupadi ( menstrual isolation on a tent or a shed every month) with a faint ray of hope that she will complete grade 12 and create a future for herself. She had married at a very young age of 19.  In her community marrying at the age of 19 years was already too late, as the parents get their daughters married at a very young age. She showed that education can actually empower.

Her education and awareness kept her from giving up hard work. With all the struggles she had completed her high school and enabled her to be selected as a girl mentor for the PHASE's program which provided her leadership skills and life skills such as planning a career and working for it while also helping younger girls she mentored to do the same.  Her life now as a teacher in a government school is a sign of success and epitome of determination for herself as well as for her classmates who got married because of the family tradition at their earlier age discontinuing their education and living their life confined in the four walls of the household.

She has broken all kinds of stereotypes that oppress girls and women. In her community, she mentors other younger girls and also supports the girls in stopping obsolete costumes such as the quarantine to the sheds and abstinence from the dairy product during menstruation.

She further says that she can't change the world but she will try to make a difference in the life  of every girl she meets by inspiring them and by bringing positive change. 

PHASE Nepal's education programs are grounded in the community and in the local context thus are actually bringing changes in the lives of schools children, young adults especially girls and women via school level and community level initiatives. PHASE has been working with 60 school teachers and 350 girls and boys of the remote village of Bichhya in Bajura District to bring lasting positive changes in their lives and empower them to be more independent thinkers and doers. We thank our generous donors who make this possible.

Nepal's whole eduation sector had been hard hit by the pandemic at the moment. While some of the private schools in the city areas are operated online, most of the public schools are closed at the moment hoping to resume soon. The past year has been difficult for everyone. In this report we would like to share with you, a short summary of our Educational Activities in the completed Nepali fiscal year i.e. from  Mid-July 2020 to Mid July 2021.

PHASE Nepal Education Programme has been one of the main components of its integrated community development projects. Since its inception Talking about school related education projects this year, the whole sector has been largely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.The public schools were closed most of the times because of the covid-19 restrictions. The only time the school were open was from December to March in Gorkha and January to March in Bajura, mentioning about the two project areas were the projects were implemented. Utilizing the school’s opened time PHASE Nepal implemented its planned activities maintaining social distancing and covid-19 prevention protocols.

Here is a short detai lof the finished activities.

Empowerment Workshops for Girls:

This fiscal year a series of empowerment workshops were completed in the project locations ofBajura, Bichchya. The workshops were primarily themed on improving the knowledge, attitude and practice of the girls regarding, health, educational attainment, equality and fundamental rights thus enabling them to aspire for better health, education and fight with the social discrimination and practices such as menstrual isolation.Although the theme of the workshop is to empower the girls, both boys and girls were involved in thematic classes so that whole generation of the adolescent youth could be covered. The classes were taken by local female facilitators. The workshops were interactive, focused on practical learning via role play and activities. A total of 110 girls and 82 boyss took part in the programme. Involvement of adolescent boys was inevitable for equitable growth and leadership of the girls.

Improvement of School’s physical Environment

As a part of improving the school’s physical environment, several initiatives weretaken this year which are summarized as follows:

1. Repairing of the septic tank and toilet water pipes in Manjushree Secondary School, Kashiguan

The septic tank of the toilet built by PHASE had been damaged by a small landslide this year making it nonfunctional. Utilizing the time of school closure, the septic tank was repaired with joint contribution of the school management committee. After the repair the school toilet is functional again. During the repair work, the plumbing work of the toilet and handwashing taps was also repaired. Schools’ toilets are one of the most essential part of safe and healthy school environment and especially sensitive in ensuring girls attendance and regularity in the school.

2. Construction of the slab bridges across therivuletsin the school premises

Children going to Keraunja Secondary school has to cross small rivulets that run across the slopes of the Keraunja hill. The rivulets have often 1 or 2 wooden planks or nothing to cross through them. Small children often fell into the rivulets and got injured. To solve this problem by making the school travel safer, the project supported the construction of slab bridges with iron railings in 4 such locations in the vicinity of schools. The construction has enabled the formation of the safe walking bridge across the rivulets for school children.

3. Upgrading the computer classes of Manjushree Secondary School

With the request from the school management, PHASE Nepal supported the upgrading of the laboratory by providing 10 desktop computers and related accessories. The furniture required for the classes were managed from the school’s side. With this 2 secondary and 2 basic schools (Lower Secondary) , a total of 4 schools have their own computer rooms to get and assess to digital literacy and learnings. These rural computer classes are first of their kinds and have provided direct access of practical classes as per Nepal government curriculum to the children from rural community schools.

Besides, PHASE supported Early Childhood Classes were also provided follow up support providing additional logistics such as visual aids and learning materials.

4. Community Meetings

Because of the COVID-19 risk, we largely did informal meetings and interactions with the stakeholders keeping the social distancing.

A total of 2399 students were directly benefitted from the PHASE's services which includes 1262 girls.

" PHASE Nepal's integrated school support is well appreciated , we hope to resume schools soon and bring the school sector back again with more rigour and enthusiasm. Hoping for PHASE's suppport in the future too", shares the school principal of Manjushree Secondary School.

 PHASE Nepal family would like to send sincere thankgs to all the donors and supporter for your continous support and generousity. Hope the difficult times will be over and we are again in the field to support the children of the remote communities.

This quarter, amid COVID-19 crisis, PHASE continued its health, education and livelihood activities maintaining strict protocol on infection prevention. Now that covid situations are getting worse and school sector is closed again. Here we share a story of one of the several girls who participated in our recently completed training and empowerment programme for adolescent girls.

Hajari (name changed) is a 14 years old studying in calss-8 in Yuna Basic School, Bajura. The village is perched on a hilly terrain of Yuna area of Bichchya village, located at a 4 day walking distance from the nearest busroads. Each day she walks about an hour to reach the school. She is one of the empowered girl from PHASE Girls Empowerment Coaching Sessions. Here is what she says about her life and experience taking part in the programme

"Being an elder daughter of my family I have to manage alot of chores before I leave for school. Several times I have to give up classes for household works. But this time, I managed to attend full class. The classes by PHASE Nepal was of different kind. I learned that practices like staying in shed during menstruation, avoiding healthy food like curd and milk during menstruation are wrong practices.I never enjoy staying aside or treated differently during menstruation. I want to share with my parents about such harmful practices, how it can hamper mental and physical growth. The Girls Empowerment 14 days' session had enlightened me. I shared my knowledge with my sisters as well. I hope such practice will get over soon."

PHASE has been running school based capacity building of teachers and adolescent girls with tailored activities to address the local problem and needs and help them in self-empowerment.

We, PHASE team, thank all the donors and supporters for supporting our community based projects and bringing real impacts in the remote communites.

In this report we will cover the major achievment in the Education project this year. Despite challenges, we were able to accomplish a list of activities in the school sector. 

PHASE Nepal aims to improve the quality of school education by improving physical facilities as well as enhancing the capacity of teaching faculty as well as the school management. In addition, PHASE's education programme also trains and mobilises adolescent youths as well as school child clubs to build leadership in children, develop extracurricular activities and to promote gender equality.

Since March 2020, the education sector has been completely shut down and we hope that the pandemic situation will change soon. Nevertheless, we summarize the range of such activities funded by different international partners in several project locations in the completed fiscal year.

Girls’ Empowerment Programmes

PHASE has been running a series of empowerment programmes intended to address the issues of several geographical regions and cultures. With support from PHASE Worldwide (BLF) and PHASE Austria (City of Vienna) we worked in Gorkha and Bajura districts with the main aim to address cross cutting issues of girls and women in the society and mitigate them with joint mobilization of trained girls and boys for social advocacy and work on gender equality. In addition, the programme motivates and prepares the young girls to complete their schooling and aim for higher education and a career while discouraging the practices like early marriage. The programme is run by the local female facilitators who are trained and mentored by PHASE. The facilitators work closely with adolescent boys and girls of the school and coach them in a peer to peer model in formal and informal sessions. The programme is run in close co-ordination with the school management committee and the local government. A summary of the activities done in this fiscal year is as follows:

 The programme was conducted in January and February before the closure of the schools. The remaining school and community level activities will be continued after the situation settles.

During the programme a total of 32 female facilitators were successfully identified and oriented on facilitation skills (20 Bajura and 12 Gorkha). They were able to conduct three batches of empowerment workshop for girls and boys (1 batch in Bajura and 2 in Gorkha). A total of 400 children (127 boys and 273 girls) from Bajura and Gorkha were directly involved in the empowerment workshops. In Gorkha, young part

Teacher’s Training and Capacity Development

Through a series of interactive teachers’ trainings, PHASE aims to encourage collaborative learning and critical thinking methods within the students. We work to enhance the capacity of the teachers working in the remote locations; this year we organised a short practical series of Teacher Training and refreshers trainings that promote the most practical and easy to use methods in rural and low resource settings. This fiscal year PHASE education team conducted the following 2 different trainings, the Best Teaching Training and the School Mentorship Training to 52 teachers of Gorkha.

Extracurricular Activities on Fridays

Starting from the second week of September, we have been running several extra-curricular activities each Friday in PHASE supported school. We support in facilitating the event and announce the prizes to the winners which is of great interest to the children.

Since the start of the programme, numerous activities such as quiz competition, public speech competition, debate competition, essay competition, math quiz, singing competition, volleyball, and relay race have been organized. With these weekly programmes, children have become confident and are interested to come to school thus showing active participation in the daily classroom activities too.

With these activities, we have been able to take the learning they have in the classroom to practical sessions and have supported active learning. PHASE Nepal's continuous support in school infrastructure, training for teachers and children-focused activities have contributed remarkably in improving the quality of education in the last 5 years.

Principal

Manju Shree Secondary School

Better ECDs, Better Schools

We were aware of the importance of early childhood education for the physical, mental, emotional and social development of child but did not have sufficient infrastructure and training. With PHASE’s support in training and materials our school has well equipped early childhood class and skilled teachers. In addition to upgrading the classroom materials, furniture, and teaching materials, the room has a smart TV screen that enables children to watch several educational materials via a USB stick offline. We are very grateful for PHASE Nepal’s support. Although our school is in a remote village parents’ area comparing the ECD classes we provide with those of the private schools in the urban areas. The children are very keen on learning with the child-friendly play way method introduced to us by PHASE. I am glad that PHASE has supported all 3 ECD classes in our ward.

-        Teacher, Early Childhood Class, Kashigaun

PHASE will continue working in the sector of Education Improvement with additional focus on the recovery after covid-19 crisis and school closure.