Jackie and David Britten returned to Nepal in November and December 2023 to monitor
progress with existing projects and to look for further opportunities for OSOC to support
vulnerable children in Nepal.
OSOC (Nepal)
Jackie and David returned to the homework club which has been supported by OSOC since 2012 (and where
David taught when they were in Nepal). The students, as usual, were excited to receive visitors bearing gifts from their sponsors and dutifully wrote thank you letters to their sponsors.
The Homework Club is supervised by Gita (teacher at the local school), Shuveccha (undergraduate student in the
city) and Nirajan Bhatta (senior English secondary school teacher). The students were observed to be studying well. There has been a significant change this year as the Nepali government has mandated that science and maths are taught in
English. This is clearly a struggle, not only for students who are not fluent in English, but also for teachers who are used to teaching in Nepali rather than English. This emphasises the need to give the additional tuition provided by the Homework Club for children disadvantaged because they do not have daily English discourse. The Homework Club is run by OSOC (Nepal), a Non-Government Organisation that requires registration from central government. As part of the registration process, OSOC (Nepal) has been asked for significant “expenses”. Such demands from public officials are common in Nepal where corruption is regrettably endemic.
PEACE EDUCATION NEPAL (PEN)
Jackie and David met with Mukesh (founder of PEN and manager of Our Sansar), Vidya (manager of PEN), Munilal
(teacher at a local secondary school and at PEN) and Aitor (Spanish co-funder of PEN) when we visited PEN’s Day Care
Centre in Gamhariya in Parsa district. The educational work that is going on is impressive. The teaching is high quality by
anyone’s standard and the students responded by engaging enthusiastically with the teacher.
They also visited a Dalit encampment at the old railway station in Birgunj. The Dalit community are the lowest class in the Hindu caste system and are subject tomarginalisation and discrimination. Birgunj is an industrial city on the Indian border. The poverty level at the camp is staggering, with no water supply and no sanitation for 20 families living in a makeshift tented village made from bamboo, grasses, cloth with occasional wattle and daub walls. PEN have already started providing social work to support the families and enabling the children to register at a local school. With funding from OSOC, PEN will increase their involvement with this community to provide pathways to education and employment, to safeguard the children and to give young people alternatives to crime.
CHAMELI SECONDARY SCHOOL (Narayangarh, Chitwan district) & SARADA SECONDARY SCHOOL (Bhanu, Tanahun district)
Jackie and David usually visit schools in poorer areas on their visits to Nepal. With donations of resources a small, but significant, difference can be made to schools desperately short of resources. Chameli school is where Jackie taught during their year in Nepal. In the years since the school has been transformed. The principal has forged relationships with local industry and some development of new classrooms has been possible. One area that has lacked funding is the nursery department, where there is only one class with 60 children. To enable the nursery department to expand OSOC donated some resources for a new classroom.
Sarada school is in a village in the hills area of Nepal. Like all government schools maintenance funding is non-existent. As with Chameli school the principal has found a sponsor, this time to build some lock-up shops on the outside of the school, which provide rental income for the school. One of the shops does a roaring trade each day in penny sweets after end of school! OSOC provided some basic resources of books and pencils for the lower school pupils.
