In this report, we would like to share about our yearly progress on Girls Empowerment Programme with is a part of PHASE's Integrated Education Project. Please find the report below:
Gender mainstreaming is another top priority of PHASE Nepal education programmes. While women focused acivities are blended in all of the PHASE's programmes including health and livelihoods improvement, PHASE also runs a specific programme to mobilize and empower all the adolescent girls of the project village. The programme named Girls Empowerment Programme involves the rural adolescent girls in a yearlong activity at school level and community level with the help of trained community facilitators.
This year a total of 93 girls from Kasigaun Gorkha took part in the empowerment training and follow up activities. A training of trainers was conducted by PHASE team for the locally 8 identified and selected female facilitators and 3 aspiring lady teachers. This year a total of 93 girls took part in the empowerment programme covering all the school going adolescent girls of the village. The girls took part in a two week long interactive training and learning sessions in the schools organized for two hours (7-9 AM) in the morning with a facility of morning meals so they could eat and join their regular school classes. During the training the following thematic topics were discussed and practices with interactive games and activities.
After the completion of the training the girls took part in several out reach activities in the village and the school level. The team conducted two different street drama covering issues like menstrual hyegine, modern day human trafficking , the consequence of early age marriage, importance of education and career for girls. They also took part in several extracurricular activities in the schools with the support of PHASE in management and prizes. The girls who were very shy on the first day of their participation in the programme became confident speakers and active participants in academic and co-curricular activities after taking part in the programme. PHASE will continue to provide follow up support to these girls in the next two years.
“After I took part in girls empowerment programme, I have discovered a new aspiration for myself. Earlier my plan was to finish school and get married as my mom suggested. But now I would like to go to college, get a degree and get a job and will stand on my own feet. I aspire to work in organizations like yours.” - Esmita, a participant from Manjushree School, Kashigaun
In Manbu, a remote village in Gorkha 24 selected lead teachers from 10 schools in took part in the a mentorship training to lead classroom observation and feedback session in their respective classrooms. The lead teachers were also provided a refresher in Best Teaching Practices.
The sessions were lead by PHASE Trainers Sumati Shakya , Lokendra Giri and Anita Acharya. The team was also accompanied by Ms. Alison Sharvill an experienced teacher from the UK and a long term supporter of PHASE education project. With her more than 20 years of experience in teaching, she supported PHASE team in enhancing the course content with her core skills such as children engagement, storytelling and mathematics teaching to best adapt at Nepali rural context.
"I really enjoy PHASE trainings. I now use best teaching practices in the classroom all the time and I have found it works wonders. I am pleased that I am selected to receive this mentorship training. The best thing I learned in recent sessions is to be able to give feedback in a very constructive and non-resenting way", shares a participant teacher.
PHASE is running a series of intensive teaching training and school development in different villages of Gorkha, an earthquake affected district to revive the hugely affected school sector.
PHASE has been working in 3 remote villages of Northern Gorkha to improve health, education and livelihood opportunities and support these isolated mountaneous communities. Here is the short summary of the education activities accomplished in this quarter.
Manbu
In May, PHASE education team had successfully facilitated a 10-day training event titled "Child Friendly School" for 62 teachers from 10 schools. In this quarter PHASE trainers performed classroom observation and feedback session to all the participant teachers. The constructive feedbacks were well appreciated by the teachers. In the coming quarter a group of aspiring 30 teachers will be provided mentorship training to run school mentorship programme in a peer to peer model.
Similarly, PHASE also plans to create a model school in the village by supporting additional physical infrastructure and follow up trainings.
" I really enjoy the feedbacks provided by PHASE educators, they have appreciated my efforts and added to the room for improvement. I am committed to use child friendly and interactive methodologies in my classes as I have felt that we are facilitators of classroom activities not the lecturers.
-Sher Bahadur Neupane, Teacher
Siddhartha Banasthali Basic School,Shyamchet, Manbu.
PHASE has been working with 10 schools of Manbu to instils child friendly environment in these remote schools.
Kashigaun and Keraunja
Similarly in the villages of Kashigaun and Keraunja several education projects are running as follows.
The PHASE supported 5 computer lab has been expanded to 9 computer lab with the help of community support. The rural children are having computer education right in their villages.
School garden programme has also started in the secondary school of Kashigaun with the installment of plastic green house, seed and technical support by agriculture technicians. With this, children are expected to learn vocation skills regarding improved vegetable farming and spread the knowledge and skills with their parents. The programme is planned to be expanded in Keraunja and Manbu.
PHASE aims to improve holistic school environment and access to education in all of these remote villages in the coming years.
PHASE Nepal has successfully supported 181 out of children in gaining and retaining access to schools in coordination with local schools, district education office and the local government with a series of trainings, social mobilizing and logistic support in Humla. The supported children are the residents of Maila, Melchham and Jair villages of extremely remote and mountaneous district of Humla in Mid Western region of Nepal.
These villages are reachable only on foot by walking at least 3 days from the nearest road access in Bajura District or Mugu District. Humla District itself does not have a road access and the only access to its headquarter Simikot is by mountain flights or at least 5 days of walk from Mugu or Bajura.
When this education project was designed it was estimated that about 120 children would be out of school in PHASE Project villages, Maila, Melchham and Jair. After the actual survey was conducted, 181 dropouts were identified and verified by the local authority revealing a more disadvantageous situation of children in the region.
A summary of project activities adapted to bring these children back to school is presented below.
Logistics Support to the children
Throughout the project period, the children were provided with essential logistic materials such as exercise books, school bags, pencils, pens, erasers and mathematics instrument box in the installment of 6 months. The parents were also communicated accordingly. PHASE Local mobilisers and EDF Anita Acharya monitored the attendance of the children in co-operation with the School Principals.
This proved to be a very effective strategy and all the children to came to school regularly. After getting all the necessary school supplies for their children, the parents felt less burdened and the children felt motivated.
In Humla where everything has to be carried by either mules or porters, everything is of high value. The provide materials were found to be used with good care.
Follow up visits at School and at Homes
PHASE EDF and Local mobilizers regularly followed up with the parents and students at homes and with students and teachers at schools to ensure regular attendance, to motivate children and to motivate parents. Parents were regularly oriented about the importance of education and how useful it is, for the future of their children. These efforts eventually started garnering increased awareness level and commitment from Parents to send children to schools.
Improving School Environment- Training Teachers and improving classrooms
To support this back to school children with better school environment, PHASE provided training and basic material support to the teachers and schools of the project to upgrade elementary classrooms.
Training on Child Friendly Learning Environment
114 teachers of the project villages teachers took part in different sessions of child friendly education training. In these training the teachers learned about the following skills :
This fiscal year 2017/18 PHASE was successful in supporting 43 different mountainous schools with training, classroom upgrading and supporting school retention with the support from several international partners and individual donors.
As a part of PHASE Nepal Teacher Training Programme, 58 Teachers of Manbu recently received a training on Child-Friendly and Interactive Teaching strategies. The 5-day long training was completely activity based and was conducted by PHASE education team who now have more than a decade of experience in practicing best teaching strategies.
During the training, primary and secondary school teachers learned to make and use low cost and no cost teaching materials as well as strategies for effective questioning, critical thinking, and collaborative learning.
" I have taught for more than 20 years but yet I feel I have to learn a lot. The activities I have learned from this training are practical enough to replicate in my classroom", says Thakur Pudasaini, Principal, Sitala Basic School, Manbu
PHASE is working with 10 schools in Manbu village, a remote village in Lower North Gorkha to instill child-friendly environment in the schools.
PHASE's practical teaching curriculum is both liked by the teachers and school supervisors and is often reached by other charities in Nepal seeking training consultancy in their education projects too.
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