Education Nepal Project #24094

Educating Reeti

by ChoraChori

Project Report | May 18, 2017
Major progress at Kitini School. Thank you!

By Philip Holmes | Founder/CEO ChoraChori UK

Pupils at Kitini School

I am very pleased to be able to report major progress in our aim of supporting the wonderful Kitini School.

To remind you, this is the state (government) secondary school that serves Reeti's primary school along with other village schools that lie in the hills above Kathmandu valley. The school is special in that it achieves results that rival the best of Nepal's private schools. For example, last year it enjoyed a 100% pass rate in the Grade 10 School Leaver's Certificate (SLC) examination. The remarkable thing is that 70% of the pupils are girls (this reflects the discrimination of parents sending their sons to private schools) and 85% of students are from lower caste families. So these are very worthy beneficiaries.

Under the inspirational and ambitious leadership of the Principal, Mr Saroj KC, and his colleagues, the school is really going places. Traditionally most state schools teach only in the Nepali language while private schools teach in English. That has changed at Kitini with classes now being taught in both languages. This development makes all the difference for students who aspire to higher education where English is the language used at universities in Nepal and overseas. Students from Kitini School can now expect a more seamless transition to universities and colleges without having to boost their command of English.

The really exciting development is that ChoraChori has secured the grant funding that has allowed the school to set up science labs for the teaching of both biology and physics. The impact of this is that the labs will cater for 270 students in grades 8 to 10 - and many more in future as the science faculty grows. But, most importantly, before we provided these labs the only possibility at Kitini for grade 11 and 12 students was to study Management or Humanities.

The Principal says: "After SLC the students who wanted to study Science had been forced to choose Humanities or Management faculties as they could not afford to go to Private colleges far away in the city. Now with the construction of the Physics and Biology Labs students can continue their higher studies here”. Teacher Dinesh Kumar Thapa added "We are very thankful for the support with the help of which we can now shift form a theory based curriculum to a more practical curriculum which will help the students and teachers alike by making the learning process more interactive and innovative". Fourteen year old Kabita told us: "I think we can’t get good marks by learning theory only. Now with the new labs we can understand the scientific concepts practically and get good grades.” Kabita, who is currently in grade 9, wants to become a dermatologist. So studying Science is vital if she is to realise her dreams.

The other piece of great news is that our friends at Hatemalo in Germany have granted us the funds we needed to purchase new computers for the computer suite. These will be delivered later this month. That just leaves us needing to find £4,700 to set up a chemistry lab that will allow the teaching of a complete Science curriculum. The pupils are suddenly optimistic. Rajiv, a 16 year old pupil in Grade 10 comments: “People think that government school students aren’t able to compete with students from private schools. This was partly true, but now with our school providing English medium classes and also practical skills in the labs we can compete with the student from those expensive schools.”

Finally, please note that we are still trying to find the funding to set up mushroom cultivation as a sustainable income generation activity for the primary schools. As per my last report this equates to £600 per mushroom shed that will yield a four times return on investment. The mushroom growing season is now ending with the approach of the monsoon, but we hope to launch this project in September.

Many thanks!

The new biology lab

The Kitini School principal, Mr Saroj KC

Links:

ChoraChori's education projects in Nepal

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Feb 21, 2017
Helping educate Reeti's older brothers and sisters

By Philip Holmes | Founder/CEO ChoraChori UK

The kindergarten at one of our village schools

Eight-year-old Prakriti studies in the Early Childhood Development Class at Tulsadevi village school in the hills above Kathmandu. This is one of the three schools that were destroyed in the 2015 earthquakes and that ChoraChori rebuilt through the Educating Reeti project. The odds are stacked against this little girl. She doesn't remember her parents as her father died and her mother eloped (common practice in Nepal) when she was an infant. Now she stays with her aunt and uncle who unfortunately are alcoholic and who spend a lot of their time engaged in drunken rows. There are no social services that can intervene in this situation in Nepal but we can help a little by ensuring that Prakriti and her classmates get at least one decent meal per day - the free school lunch that we lay on at all three primary schools to incentivise attendance. Prakriti is a very quiet child yet when one of our field staff asked her what she liked at school she replied "1,2,3". By that she meant that mathematics is her favourite subject!

Our next immediate challenge is to set up oyster and shitake mushroom cultivation that will generate the income locally that will pay for the primary school lunches in perpetuity. We had hoped to build two mushroom sheds a couple of months ago as this is now the growing season, but unfortunately, we haven't raised the funds we need to launch this element of our work. Specifically, it costs £600 ($740) to build a mushroom shed with a fourfold return on investment. If you can help us with this fundraising need that would be wonderful.

Later in 2017, funds permitting, we'd love to develop the project further by extending support to the excellent, but under-resourced, secondary school that serves these and other primary schools in the locality. Kitinin Higher Secondary School provides a full education from ECD classes right up to Bachelor's degree level. At the moment there are 600 students attending in classes ECD up to Grade 10, with 550 in the High School and Bachelor's programmes. Results are remarkable with a 100% pass rate in last year's 10th Grade School Leaving Certificate examination. School graduates go on to find very good jobs and sometimes quite prominent places within Nepali society. See this film.

The surprising thing is that 70% of the pupils are girls. Why the imbalance? The reason is entirely one of gender discrimination for parents are willing to fund their sons' education at private schools while their daughters are sent to state schools. It's difficult, but not impossible, to overcome such attitudes within Nepalese society, but in the meantime, ChoraChori aims to give the school the funding support we believe it needs and deserves. We have two fundraising goals. The first is to purchase the 12 new computers that will allow the school to extend computer studies to the highest grades. The existing 12 computers are now obsolete (10 years old) and of these three aren't working. The second goal is to set up a science laboratory without which the school can't teach the subject in any meaningful way. A science lab will benefit pupils in grades 8 to 10, with 85 pupils in each year. The computers will cost £3,700 ($4,590) while the science lab will cost £4,600 ($5,700)

So overall, we remain on course towards our Aim of delivering a comprehensive and sustainable education programme in the aftermath of the earthquakes.

Thank you so much for your continued support.

Kind regards

Philip Holmes

Founder ChoraChori

A ChoraChori field staff member with children

Boys at Chapakharka village primary school

Obsolete computers at Kitini Secondary School

A kindergarten boy

Prakriti with her friends at school

Attachments:

Educating Reeti Programme Needs 2017 (PDF)

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Nov 23, 2016
Chapakharka school gets painted!

By Philip Holmes | Founder/CEO ChoraChori UK

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