Help us rebuild schools in Nepal

This is an extremely somber and uncertain time in Nepal, as a surge of Covid-19 infections has overwhelmed hospitals and the country's fragile public health system. Our thoughts are with our friends, colleagues and everyone in Nepal as they try their best to outlast the ravages of the pandemic.

Schools have closed once again, and it's possible that they may only be able to open sporadically over the next few years, unless foreign governments step in with supplies of a vaccine.

We do have some good news to share, however. The government recently completed an evaluation of our work, conducted by the Social Welfare Council, which oversees our implementing partner in Nepal. Monitors visited some of our partner schools and interviewed parents, teachers, students, administrators and local representatives to determine the impact of our read-aloud program and accompanying teacher training activities. The monitors also reviewed our project finances.

Here are some key findings of the report:

• Roughly 3,000 students, teachers and parents benefited from our read-aloud program.
• 84% of students reported that they enjoyed reading stories.
• 88% of teachers believed that the cognitive capabilities of their students had improved.
• 90% of local leaders believed that the project improved the quality of education in schools within their communities. They also reported that they had seen an increase in the number of children interested in reading.
• 100% of school administrators attested that the project had improved the teaching and learning environment of their schools.
• 100% of parents agreed that the project had improved the quality of education, benefited their communities and promoted schooling within the communities. In 2018, when we began the first series of projects, we had hoped to increase the net enrollment in schools where it had been been diminishing over the last few years. This data doesn’t prove that enrollment has increased, but it does show that parents are willing to send their daughters, who are often saddled with household chores, to school.
• We've increased awareness of reading aloud in schools and in communities. Children are taking books home and reading aloud to their parents.
• Our partner schools are some of the poorest in the areas where we work, in Kavre and Nuwakot districts, in central Nepal. These are rural communities located in hard to reach areas often overlooked by charity groups and foreign nongovernmental organizations like ours. The report noted that we specifically chose to help these schools because they have limited resources (many of them did not have a library before joining our program) and student test scores were among the lowest in the district.

We have great admiration for the resilience of our staff, the rural communities where we work and all of the people of Nepal as they cope with this latest surge of the coronavirus. We remain grateful for the support of donors like you, who make our work possible. Thank you!

While schools are shut during the pandemic, we've started to publish our own quality books for kids to read at home.

Our goal is to support local Nepali authors and artists (including our own teachers!) to write, illustrate and publish original children's books in Nepali with culturally appropriate Nepali settings and characters. Our first three titles will be published in early 2021.

Our parter in Nepal, Kakshyalaya, has been distributing books to schools in the Kathmandu Valley that participate in our read-aloud training program. Lately, it has been hard pressed to find an adequate number of quality children's books.

We want to meet that need and demonstrate to publishers in Nepal that a conscientious team of writers, illustrators, editors and others can produce rewarding and engaging experiences for young readers. Kakshyalaya hopes to change the status quo in the local publishing industry that often views books as a vehicle to teach morals to children.

One of our books is about honey bees and how industrious they are. The text describes the various chores of the worker bees and repeats a refrain of “Oh wow! That's the hardworking honeybee.”

Here are some sample stanzas from the book:

Thank you for your support during this unusual and trying year!