From the Field: Nepal

Brett McNaught
Vice President, International Programs

October, 2009
The other day I was working with our buildOn Nepal staff to prepare for the ground breaking of two new schools in Nepal . They are called Balawagada and Devigunj and will be buildOn schools #338 and #339 worldwide respectively. As we began construction of these two schools, I looked back and was inspired by the buildOn communities that came before them.

buildOn, and the communities we partner with, have been building schools in Nepal since 1993. Since that time, together we have built 67 schools and provided adult literacy and community building support through our Community Education Program to 2,438 adults, over 85% of them women.

The Community of Shishaiya
Looking at the community of Shishaiya, I can see the great impact and transformation communities are making, and it is deeply inspiring to me. The school in Shishaiya was completed in just 14 weeks on December of 2007. Over 1,650 volunteer workdays went into building the school. Since the school’s completion, we have seen enrollment increase 12%, and the percentage of girls to boys balance.

When I visited the community last November I was reminded of the old proverb, “If one ploughs the field one will produce a lot of rice, but if you go to school you will gain nothing.” The community members over and over have told me that today, they know that the opposite is true. They now say, if one has education they have a great future, and if they do not have education they will have a difficult road ahead of them. The community of Shishaiya does not just give lip service to these words; they have put their newfound views into action.

Community Education Program
We began running our Community Education Program in Shishaiya after the completion of the school. Composed of 80 women from the village, participants range from grandmothers to teenage girls who have never had the chance for formal education. The Community Education Programis designed to provide both literacy and numeracy to adults while at the same time meeting their needs by teaching sanitation and health, income generation, agriculture and other issues related to local community development.

Together, the Community Education Program is Shishaiya is accomplishing remarkable things:

• All 80 women have now obtained a strong foundation in literacy and math.
• The women have participated in social mapping and they have created, for the first time, a written history of the village to be shared with the rest of the community and be passed down to following generations.
• The women also assisted the teachers by walking house-to-house raising awareness of the importance of sending all children to school.
• These women also decided that is was very important for the health and hygiene of their families to have sanitary latrines and, using their skills from the construction of the first latrines in the village at the buildOn school, they led a project to construct latrines for each household.
• They also created a cleaning task force to address the problem of waste and litter and now have one of the cleanest villages in the region.
• As for income generating activities several women from the group underwent a brick mason training and are now gainfully employed in infrastructure projects around the area. Another group of inspiring women started their own sewing cooperative in order to pool their resources and efforts.

It is for all these reasons that we feel so strongly that what we are doing is working for committed communities around the globe. To date we have completed 330 schools worldwide and there are many more to go. On behalf of communities like Shishaiya around the world I thank you for your support of buildOn programs!