The Girls Education Project in Rural Nepal

The deadliest earthquake (7.8 magnitudes) on the 25th of April and a major aftershock (7.3 magnitudes) on the 12th of May took more than 8,600 lives and demolished over 756,000 houses, schools and monuments in Nepal. People of Nepal are traumatized and many more aftershocks are still being experienced. Many families in the heavily affected area have abandoned their home and sleeping under tent. Schools, government offices and businesses are still closed.

Even though ministry of education have decided to reopen schools from the 31st of May, it is hard to say when schools will reopen in the heavily affected areas. Our project is based in Bhagawatpur, Mahadewa and Bathanaha panchayats which is in Saptari district, south of Nepal and luckily this part of Nepal did not experienced any major damage to houses. Apart from schools, businesses are as usual with caution.

However, people are in a massive trauma, particularly children across the country. Many scream in sleep 'earthquake came…run for life, earthquake came…run for life'. Even I feel like the earth is shaking all the time when sitting on sofa or lying on bed. Pupils are scared and they do not want to be away from their family. So it is very hard to bring them back to school.

From 28th of April until 18th of May, I have been working non-stop with the girls in the scheme in the three village panchayats to develop confidence in them so they can return to school. I did make some progresses but the 7.3 magnitudes aftershock made it worse. Today is my last day in Nepal so I can't be on the field anymore. But I have trained some volunteers to continue the work and they are in the field. I will also support them through phone calls and email from UK. 

Nepal is on its knees and we are working extra hard to bring the girls back into school but this involves unplanned expenses which will put the organization on financial pressure. So, please support us in this difficult time by donating whatever you can afford.

Best wishes