Home | Introduction - Environment - History - Trek - Sponsors - Donations - Contact | Past Projects | Current Projects |

Since its beginning in 1990, it has been the approach of the Kangchenjunga School Project to address the basic needs of the area by focusing on educational and health issues. Long term goals of the KSP project have been to introduce and support environmentally sustainable practices into the community at large.

Low Standards

Traditional education has many shortcommings which commonly occur in village Nepal. Often there is a high rate of teacher absenteeism and poor teacher performance, as the teachers are often Hindu, and the students are Tibetan or Sherpas. Culturally distanced, there appears little active engagement in the outcome or welfare of the students. It is twice as likely for a women to have no education at all, with Tibetan women being at the bottom of the educational track.

Medical facilities are also poor. The clinic in Taplejung only offers a very limited care, and the nearest hospital which performs operations is another gruelling six day from there. Even if a sick person were physically able to endure being transported on someone's back in a straw basket, most likely they could not afford the ten or twenty dollars to cover the cost of the journey. As a results of these obstacles, most diseases were allowed to run their course, and villagers accepted the outcome.

Schools and Health Clinics

With these problems in mind, the Kangchenjunga School Project built a combined school and health clinic at the village of Ghunsa in 1990, and a second in Folay four years later. The introduction of these two small clinics has been largely successful in meeting the health-care needs of roughly 1000 inhabitants in the Kangchenjunga region. Medical intervention has resulted in saving numerous lives.

Improvement of water systems has also reduced the incidence of diarrheal diseases, a leading cause of death in infants. Clean water is critical to minimize chronic parasitic infections resulting in impaired immune systems in both adults and children. KSP also has projects underway to train local women to be able to provide maternal and women's health care. A network of solar and wind powered vaccine refrigerators is also helping provide medical care in even the most remote villages. Other programs involve constuction of a girls dormintory at Lelep, and a pre-school education program.

Basic Needs

The basic needs as defined by the World Health Organisation (W.H.O) are:

• Access to clean drinking water
• Consumption of adequate caloric intake to meet energy requirements
• Access to basic health-care that includes childhood vaccinations
• Access to learning basic skills of reading, writing and computation

This website contains a description of various projects undertaken by the Kangchenjunga School Project, as brielfy mentioned above, in an effort to meet these needs.

Home | Introduction - Environment - History - Trek - Sponsors - Donations - Contact | Past Projects | Current Projects |