Improving Access and Quality of Education in Nepal

Dear Friends,

Everyone at Freedom to Learn would like to wish you a very Happy New Year and thank you for your continued support. As we head into 2024, we have ambitious plans and are busy preparing for the delivery of a new project, which will make a huge difference to the children’s lives and the way they go on to live them. More on this a bit later...

Christmas was a busy time for our UK team. Programmes Director, Joey, Fundraising Manager, Aimee, and Chair of Trustees, Jamie, attended several Christmas events, where they sold beautiful goods that are handmade in Nepal by the parents of the children we support. Thankfully, people loved all these products! Our felt decorations and garlands, silk scarves, wrapping paper and bags sold very well and, by the end of December, we had taken over £2,000! All the profits will go towards our vital work with children in the Panauti municipality.

Joey visited our friends at Milford Primary School, where she and Miss Walton (one of our fabulous volunteers who visited Panauti in September) gave an assembly about how all the goods are made and how buying our ethical gifts supports families and communities in Nepal. Aimee later held a stall at the school and was delighted by how many children and parents came along to buy gifts for Christmas!

In Nepal, our team has been conducting a research project investigating the state of early childhood development provision across the municipality, in order to ensure that we have a really good grasp of what is going well, what is missing, where there are issues we can easily address and where there are larger gaps that will need more solid action - such as working with the government to implement changes they are able to budget for, or providing tailored teacher training. The information our team is gathering is wide, from numbers of teachers and students attending to levels of classroom and community engagement, educational resources available, teacher’s level of training and much more.

And now for our plans for 2024...We plan to deliver a new project based on environmental education called A Pedagogy of Empowerment, Hope and Action (PEHA). As well as facing significant barriers to education, our beneficiaries are also hugely impacted by climate change. Did you know that, when it comes to climate change, Nepal is one of the worst affected countries in the world, despite being one of the lowest carbon emitters? In Nepal, the impact of climate change is acute, adversely affecting lives with floods, forest fires, damaged crops and subsequent high levels of migration.

This year, through a multi-faceted approach, we will instil an understanding of climate change in our beneficiaries and explore the tangible ways the young people themselves can change the future for the better. PEHA will build on our long-standing and successful Act on Education project, where children will work with our facilitators to identify the problems caused by climate change, discuss possible solutions and present these findings to large audiences in a number of theatrical performances. Many stakeholders, including school management, local businesses, politicians and journalists will attend these events and everyone will work together to action the solutions identified by the young people.

We anticipate the outcomes to include: a multi-stakeholder collaborative crop protection scheme, multi school litter picks and river clearances, plastic usage campaigns and advocacy, leadership and innovation workshops and events, effective flood barrier constructions.

In order to deliver this project we are working hard to find funding, connections and experts in the field of environmental education. If you can help, we would love to hear from you.
Thank you once again for all your support. We look forward to updating you on our progress this year.

Links:

• Freedom to Learn website
• https://www.facebook.com/freedomtolearnUK/