We believe that many development activities wouldn’t be necessary if all people had enjoyed good quality education. Proper education gives a very good basis for life and it can open many doors. Education changes people’s behavior, lifestyle and can give skills and knowledge to make the best of their lives. Unfortunately, in upper Humla mostly only the eldest son goes to school and only a few girls get a chance to do the first few classes before their parents take them back to help in the household or in the fields.
- Education Fund:
THIS will be starting an Education Fund, which will provide scholarships and tuition classes to students in order to increase the enrollment of girls to school from disadvantaged, poor but talented groups of people who cannot continue their studies. The fund will also provide small maintenance or physical improvements for those schools, which take good care of the students who have received the scholarship under the Education Fund.
- Scholarships
- Tuition classes for SLC appearing students
- Improvement of School Learning Environment by increasing the girl’s enrolment
Education is the backbone of all development, and THIS is active in this field on various levels:
- Early Childhood Development Centres (ECDs). Together with UNICEF, we are creating ECDs in 4 VDCs to stimulate children starting at a very young age and to allow mothers to engage in economic or farm activities.
- Scholarships are provided to poor families to give all children an equal chance for education.
- Tuition classes are provided to 32 promising students who are sitting for their final SLC exams in order to increase pass rates in the district and give 36 students the chance to continue education and to become a valuable human resource for the community.
- UNESCO – Community Learning Centres (CLCs) Project:
UNESCO is supporting THIS to set-up and to provide technical and management support to four CLCs and 16 sub-CLCs in 4 VDCs (Baragaon, Dandafaya, Hepka and Simikot) of Humla since 1st August 2003. CLCs are local educational centres, outside the formal education system, managed by local people to provide life long learning opportunities for community development and improvement of people’s quality of life.
It has been a great honour for THIS to become the project partner of UNESCO-Kathmandu to run its Community Learning Centres (CLCs) in Humla.
The CLC project has seven main areas as components of implementation as below;
- Education and communication.
- Awareness, vocational skill development training.
- Women-children empowerment.
- Income generation.
- Culture and heritage preservation.
- Community infrastructure development.
- Networking, coordinating, Institutional development and management
The CLC project activities are being implemented with close coordination of Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES) / Non-formal Education Centre (NFEC) in the central level and initiated in the district with close coordination with District Education Office (DEO) since August 2003.
CLC activities are prepared on the basis of local community needs, existing issues and problems, particularly in Non-formal education and the overall social and human development of the disadvantaged groups. The process begins with need identification, planning, implementation and resource mobilization by direct involvement of local community people. UNESCO and other governmental and non-governmental developing agencies have provided financial and technical support to them.
In summary, the local community needs are the main activities of the CLC, which have been solved and resolved with joint participation of local community, UNESCO and other concerned developing organizations.
Men and women choose their learning areas according to their own priorities, leading to wide variety activities, like:
- vegetable farming for improved nutrition rope & bead production training for women
- Health awareness trainings and workshops
- watch & radio repair training for youth
- bamboo basket weaving training for men
- Para-legal training for women (equal inheritance between sexes, human rights)
- Early child hood development Centres (ECD Centres).
- Literacy classes for women and adults.
- Community Library.
- Tuition / Coaching Classes for poor & disadvantaged families.
- Educational support to local educational Institutions.
- Educational awareness activities.
- Children and youth club/groups mobilization.
- Scholarship support to support poor and ethnic minority students and
- CLC/school building construction/renovation
- Preservation of traditional dance & culture including dance competition between the 4 CLCs and
- Other activities as per community needs
More than 1000 households (6420 family members) are participating and benefiting from the CLCs.