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Aim: To provide students with educational facilties closer to home, so they remain in their local village and provide it with their skills, avioding a drain of young people to the large cities.
Assistance: Would you like to volunteer your skills or time to help with this project, or are you interested in providing funds for local educational scholarships, or for renovations on the Lelep School?
One reason given for often observed poor teacher performance and high rate of teacher absenteeism in village schools is that teachers are generally Hindu, and their students are Tibetan/Sherpas. Culturally distanced, there appears little active engagement in the outcome or welfare of students. Other reasons cited are boredom of both student and teacher engaged in rote memorization exercises. In addition, there is generally a complete lack of any teaching materials, or absence of further teacher training opportunities.
One of the Kanchenjunga School project’s long-term goals is to train teachers who hail from the area, share more in common with their students and are more likely to stay in the region on a long term basis. To that end, KSP has supplied scholarships to help pay for the education of promising students from the region.
Our eventual hope is that local children can receive the education locally that they previously had to travel to Taplejung, Kathmandu, or Darjeeling to receive. Too often – after sampling the amenities and excitement of big city living, graduates choose not to return to the mountain villages. However, if promising students can receive better training closer to home, it is hoped that this will greatly enhance the chances of remaining in the area either to teach, provide health-care services, or perhaps be employed as nature guides and promote conservation activities in the newly created Kangchenjunga Conservation Area. Certainly, as the Kangchenjunga Region faces a struggle over who will control her vast resources, young people will be facing dilemmas unknown to their parents and grandparents. It will be necessary for young people to develop skills that place emphasis on creative problem solving.
As a step toward this goal, KSP is seeking to raise funds for the construction of a girl’s dormitory, including renovations and additions to a Secondary School in Lelep, a village a few days walk from Ghunsa.
The headmaster of the Lelep school has shown exceptional dedication in promoting women’s education. Two local sherpa women have successfully graduated from the Lelep high school, which officially only goes to the 10th grade. For the remaining two years of study, the students were tutored and passed their school leaving certificate and obtained teaching certificates that enables them to hold full time teaching positions in the local schools. By educating and employing students locally, there is less risk of experiencing the inevitable "brain drain" phenomenon that occurs in underserviced rural areas such as the Kangchenjunga Region.
Currently, there are about 8-9 girls who hope to achieve a similar success, and are living, sleeping, cooking, eating and studying in three small, scarcely livable rooms adjacent to the main school. Other girls fending for themselves, are scattered throughout the village, boarding in the houses of strangers. This is clearly a less than optimal situation. With better facilities to live and study in, the goal of providing education closer to remote villages may be more easily achieved.
Would you like to volunteer your skills or time to help with this project, or are you interested in providing funds for local educational scholarships, or for renovations on the Lelep School?
| Home | Current Projects: - Overview : Lelep - Health - Fridges - History - Education | Past Projects | |
