Support Education and Livelihoods in rural Nepal

For Nepalese Dalits affected by poverty and discrimination, education is not seen as a priority. Our project is helping change this, allowing people to realise their capacity for learning and pass that onto the next generation.

Sor, aged 54, remembers being told that "only men could learn" by her parents. She never received an education, though her brothers did. As a Dalit, and therefore "untouchable", she couldn't touch the local water supply and was blocked from religious sites. Education, she was told, was not for her.  We believe that education is a fundamental right and essential to bring people out of poverty. By running finance management groups, as well as workshops that teach new skills like crop growing, we work to bring otherwise excluded women together to learn how they can improve their lives.

After Sor's husband died, she joined one of our finance group, in order to save and study new ways to gain financial security, medical fees and education for her children. For the first time, she was able to pursue new knowledge and was treated according to her potential, not because of her gender or caste. "I was so excited to be able to learn," she says. "It's never enough, you can always learn more."

In the newest scheme funded thanks to your support, she has learnt how to double her income through growing and harvesting mushrooms. She feels proud to be learning and she wants her daughters, who are now in school, to feel the same.

"If I had an education, I would have had the confidence to speak up. Now I am too old," Sor says. "But my daughters can have a different future. They don't need to suffer like I did."