By Lisa Lyons | U.S. Director
In our last report, we explained how ETC had finished up the last bits of school improvement work in schools with which we had been working since 2008. Now that ETC is working in numerous new villages, we have been collaborating with the personnel of 31 schools in those villages to determine the most important and pressing needs for improvement. In this report, we'll highlight two particular schools and their youngest students.
Gujarpa Lower Secondary School is in Lapilang Village Development Committee. Nikobhumi Higher Secondary School is in Babare Village Development Committee. Both have pre-primary classrooms - what we in the United States would refer to as pre-school and kindergarten, for the children who are a year or two younger than the average Grade 1 student. You can see photos of each classroom attached to this report. The teachers of these classes were among the 17 who have participated in our recent professional development activities - including orientation and training in best practices for working with the youngest students, and establishment of a pre-primary teachers' network. Professional development opportunities for educators are rare in rural Nepal, and these teachers are delighted to be benefit from ETC's programs. Their classrooms have also received useful supplies, such as wooden puzzles, alphabet and number blocks, crayons and colored pencils, and paper - all of which will help them offer a more enriching educational experience to their young students. You can see from the photos that there is need for physical improvements, such as wall plastering/painting and the provision of child-sized furniture. These two classrooms will be among the first to receive such improvements, although all 31 schools in our new project area will benefit from some improvement work over the course of the next few years.
These two pre-primary classrooms are among several that individual donors can sponsor. For $1,000 per year, a donor can sponsor a specific pre-primary classroom and receive twice yearly photos of the class, letters from the teacher (and signed by students as they are able), information about the children's activities and about what has been accomplished in terms of physical improvements to the rooms, and perhaps artwork or poems, etc. created by students in the class.
Please note that the observation of major fall holidays (Dashain and Tihar or Deepawali) means that schools were closed for much of the period from late September (which is also the end of the monsoon season) through late October. Now that the groundwork of establishing relationships and setting priorities has been completed, the physical improvement work can begin in earnest. We'll have more details in our next quarterly report. In the meantime, thank you again for your support, and please contact us at director@etc-nepal.org with any questions.
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