Training 1500 Teachers |Empowering 5000 Girls/Boys

NTTI Empowers Women: Sumi's Story

"When I started my teaching career, I was not a trained teacher. I just joined the teaching profession to make a living, but then I discovered that I was very passionate about teaching and really wanted to make learning fun for my students. Being part of Nepal Teacher Training Innovations (NTTI) has been a great opportunity for me. Being with NTTI has helped me in my professional development by giving me lots of ideas and teaching methods and enabling me to feel more professional and confident as both a teacher and a person. Female students and teachers now tell me that I am a good role model for them because I am strong and independent.

Being part of NTTI has also improved the quality of my life for me and my family because my salary has enabled us to install electricity and running water in our house. Before, we had no electricity and we had to get all our water from the neighborhood well. Sometimes we had to wait in line for a long time and then the water might even run out. Now we even have a computer and I love learning new things from the Internet, like every day expressions in English from You Tube or how to feed my cat Panda her pill.

When I first joined NTTI I was a teacher. Then I became a trainer and now I am the Educational Coordinator for the Project. I never thought I would go so far in my life and that I would feel so proud of myself. NTTI has opened up my world and made me more confident than I ever thought was possible for me."

Sumi the Superstar

Sumati comes from a single parent family. Her father died when she was 13 and ever since then she has been the family’s sole breadwinner. Although her mother has only an eighth grade education, Sumi is getting her Masters in Arts from. Tibhuvan University. When we first met Sumi, she was working as a primary-level teacher making less than $56/month.

Sumi participated in the first NTTI training and we were immediately impressed by her ability to apply what she learned to her own teaching. As soon as NTTI received it’s first grant, we hired her to be our Assistant Trainer. Within a year she was promoted to Master Trainer and began conducting trainings and providing feedback to teachers, including male teachers, who sometime have more education and/or experience then she does and who are often from "higher " castes.

In May of 2013, Sumi became NTTI's Educational Coordinator and is now responsible for supervising all NTTI programs on ground in Nepal. She is our Superstar!

NTTI Empowers Women

Sumi's experience is one example of how NTTI empowers women. By being active participants in NTTI trainings and working as Mentor Teachers who provide on-going coaching to their peer teachers, NTTI-trained female teachers are challenging prevailing stereotypes of women as being intellectually inferior to men and are proving themselves to be catalysts for positive change in their schools. NTTI has trained more than 500 female teachers from 11 districts across Nepal. 45 of these female teaches are now working as Mentor Teachers coaching their peers, including male teachers, and working with school principals to uplevel the quality of instruction for students.  

Supporting this project will enable us to train 100's of additional female teachers who, like Sumi, will serve as powerful role models and sources of hope for the women and girls in their communities. If you make a contribution today, March your donation will be match and NTTI will get twice the amount. 

Thanks in advance for your support. 

In the past months, NTTI trainers have been traveling to increasingly remote corners of Nepal including Manbu, Sirdibas, and Lapu in North Gorkha, where schools are typically a 3-6 days walk to the nearest road and paths are often steep and treacherous. In most villages, this is the first time teachers have received training and they are very open and excited to learn new techniques.

North Gorkha Training Report, Submitted by Master Trainer Sumati S. 

"The trail was wet and slippery and the Gandaki River was raging far below us as we trekked up the mountain to the village where we were giving our 5-day training. Our guide told us that there had been many landslides this winter and that numerous people and mules had fallen over the path into the river loosing their limbs along the way. We were scared, but when we arrived in the village after it was already dark, all the teachers were waiting for us with eager, smiling faces and katas (ceremonial scarves) and mallas (garlands of flowers) and that made our treacherous trip worth it. 

At the end of our training Rayendra Sir gave a speech about how useful the information was for him and for all the teachers. I could see from his eyes that he really meant it. The teachers promised us that they would use all the NTTI techniques and we are now excited to see their improvement when we return for our post-training classroom observations after a few months. We hope though that the mountain paths will be less dangerous on our next trip. 

Here are some things the teachers said about our training: 

“ The NTTI training taught me how to make my students think and not just memorize.”      Anisha, Primary School, Teacher at Buddha Secondary School

“ Previously I gave lots of lectures but now I  will try to let my students discover he answers for themselves in different ways. I feel much more confident and passionate about my teaching after the training.”     Mukti, Lower Secondary Teacher at Bhuddah Secondary School, Sirdibas

"This  training for us is a great asset from NTTI . We will keep it until our last breath. I particularly like the trainer's way of giving feed back in a very positive way. Now I am stealing their technique of giving feedback. We promise you NTTI that what you taught us will be always in our heart and we will apply it in our school. "      Principal of Manbu Higher Secondary School. 

Thanks to the generous contributions from our supporters, NTTI has trained more than 1,500 teachers from 11 Districts across the country. Because each teacher works with roughly 60 students, NTTI -trained teachers are having a positive impact on more than 90,000 children!!

With continued funding we will be able to train 1,500 additional teachers over the next three years. 

Thank you so much for your support!