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Educate The Children is a nonprofit based in Ithaca, New
York and Kathmandu, Nepal. It includes a group of talented
board members and volunteers. Volunteers work primarily
with woman and children in villages surrounding the Kathmandu
valley. |
Once upon a time, in a far away land of exotic temples and
magnificent monasteries lived many forgotten people under impoverished
conditions. ‘Queen’ Pamela Carson during her ‘American’
visit to Nepal encountered hungry children on the streets of
the Kathmandu Valley and thereafter decided to give away pastries
to eradicate their stomach aches. Ha! The world has changed
in the era of globalization and many more socially responsible
people have risen against the extreme polarity of those privileged
and underprivileged. In the mantra of education, Educate The
Children (ETC) took birth after the amazingly realized Pamela
Carson encountered the notorious paradox of poverty in midst
of Nepal’s beauty in the year 1988. Why do such differences
exist and how does one explain their roots? How does one define
‘education’ within a community’s context and
foresee the implications of what ‘being educated’
can imply for community? Nepal is an extremely diverse nation
with innumerable distinct communities being defined within the
term Nepalese. We must ask; Who is left out and who is within
the scope of opportunities from government? Over time, how does
one’s ethnic background transform into a permanent relationship
with poverty?
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Educate the Children prides itself on developing an education
agenda sensitive to the needs of the community it helps,
where the goal is to provide education to improve the basic
knowledge and living standards of the community. |
A community’s survival depends on its ability to carry
on traditions that are at its core and Educate the Children’s
mandate embraces that. Educate the Children prides itself on
developing an education agenda sensitive to the needs of the
community it helps, where the goal is to provide education to
improve the basic knowledge and living standards of the community.
What use is The Tale of Two Cities by the famous Charles
Dickens, or Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen? The
western intellectuality has not been used here as the standard.
This year ETC celebrates the 10th anniversary of their Integrated
Community Development program, a program with a combination
of children’s education, women’s literacy and a
wide range of development activities in order to create complementary
benefits for families and the community at large.
The Women’s Development Program, created in 1994, works
to counter the inequalities of the past and helps inspire women
to create positive social and economic change. This work is
reinforced through ETC’s Community Sponsorship Program,
which helps children, especially girls, attend school while
improving the conditions at school. ETC currently provides support
for 27 schools in the Kathmandu Valley through infrastructure
improvement, supply for education materials and teacher training.
ETC has also invested heavily on the development of pre-primary
education programs at the request of mothers, so they can dedicate
their time to income-generating opportunities.
By integrating women’s empowerment with children’s
education, ETC strives to ensure that gains from their projects
will be maintained and built upon into the future. There is
direct link between a mother’s ability to generate an
income and a daughter’s capacity to acquire an education.
After a recent visit to ETC’s former program area in Nuwakot
District, Mira Rana, ETC’s Nepal Director, observed that
“… because [ETC’s] activities there included
awareness raising with the importance of education (especially
for daughters), and included increasing the income-generating
capacity for mothers, most scholarship students have been able
to continue [studying] with their own family resources”.
Samyukta Women’s Saving and Credit Cooperative, formed
in 2001 after years of support towards sustainability from ETC,
has a total of 148 members from 11 different women’s groups,
where women are in charge of their micro-credit loan funds.
Thus empowered, women put to use their intensive literacy training
and training in group leadership, record keeping, business management,
income-generating ventures, agriculture, livestock raising,
and more. ETC’s Agriculture Program helps women learn
to improve the quality and sustainability of their family’s
lives through improved methods of farming and livestock rearing.
ETC has also helped provide basic amenities such as latrines,
ventilated stoves, and electricity.
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The true victory for ETC and these communities come from
their local Village Development Committee’s recognition
of the importance of their participation through further
funding for their projects. |
As Risang Tamang has declared ,”ETC spreads lights into
our village”. Through Samyukta, the women have built strong
partnerships with other local organizations in the district
and have begun to gain physical and technical support to help
run their programs. The true victory for ETC and these communities
come from their local Village Development Committee’s
recognition of the importance of their participation through
further funding for their projects.
Ultimately, ETC dreams that the organization will not be needed
anymore and the communities that it helps will learn to sustain
themselves through active participation in their communities
and by creating a visibility of their rights within Nepal. True,
lasting change must emerge from the very core of a community.
Despite the work for independence outside India, Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi realized that the struggle had to come from those Indians
living under the very colonial British regime.
As a Tibetan living within the diaspora, I ardently believe
that the very landscape of the Tibetan struggle can change from
the Tibetan’s in Tibet. Educate the Children works to
serve as a catalyst to inspire the people from these underprivileged
communities to aspire a better life, to act as powerful agents
within their communities.
This article has been written with information provided from
various ETC newsletters. Please contact ETC at info@etc-nepal.org
or at (607) 272-1176.
