STEP by STEP

Saipu-Ticino Educational Program by Strengthening and Empowering of People

This project began in 1999 with the objective to build a school in Saipu, a village in the district of Ramechap. When we started the project, Saipu had no access to electricity and was equipped with neither hygienic nor healthcare facilities.

Objectives

From the very beginning, the main objective was to ensure that all children in Saipu -in particular girls and children of lower caste- had access to education. According to initial estimates, the school was to welcome about 200 pupils, divided into seven classes. It was necessary to employ additional teachers, since the Nepalese government initially only provided two. One of the fundamental aspects of our strategy was to implicate the local population by making them participate in the development and management of the project as well as in the practical, building work.

Partner

To make this project come true, Kam For Sud worked in tight collaboration with a local NGO called Ekikrit Gramin Bikash Manch, seated in the village itself. The latter handled the acquisition of land, the management of the building site, and the workers’ payment. A management committee for the school, composed of inhabitants of Saipu of various castes and ethnic provenances, was then constituted so that it may choose and employ the new teachers and handle various administrative aspects.

Strategy

Except for a few bags of cement and very few other products, the school was built with local materials (wood & stone), an through the work of the numerous men of Saipu. Hence, almost all expenses were re-invested in the village itself, allowing many families of emigrated workers to remain united for nearly a year, and creating a certain development of the village’s micro-economy.

The sanitary installations with running water had two goals: making toilets available for pupils, and serving as a model for the construction of similar structures in the village.

Results

The new school in Saipu was inaugurated in April 2000, spacious, luminous, and with sanitary installations with running water. A small library with books in Nepalese and English is available for students. A large assembly room is used for community activities and meetings.

The school presently welcomes 300 pupils and offers lessons up to the tenth grade. At least half of the pupils are girls. All the project’s objectives have been achieved. We also observed with great pleasure that, after the school’s construction, several families built sanitary installations following the model of those in the school, thus considerably improving their own condition.

The school in Saipu

The transfer of responsibility

After the most difficult years of the civil war (2202 – 2006), negotiations with the Nepalese government regarding the transfer of responsibility for the teachers’ salaries could reseume. At the beginning of the project, two teachers were paid by the government and seven by Kam For Sud. Today, the salary of nine teachers is provided by the government while Kam For Sud provides the seven others.

The Nepalese government grants the school a prize

In 2009 the school was awarded a prize by the Nepalese government with two distinctions: the first for the structural quality of the building, the second for the high number of attending girls, a figure considerably higher that the national average.

Didactic program

Although the school is functioning very well globally, the didactic methods used by the teachers are obviously and objectively incomplete. This is a general problem affecting not only Saipu but the whole of Nepal –as well as many other developing countries–. Teaching is generally based on group repetition rather than on a true understanding of topics, let alone independent thinking and research. There is no stimulation for reflection, only for copying and repeating. Naturally, brilliant pupils still manage to progress in this environment, however most children experience school as an enormous memory exercise: maths and languages, science and stories, everything is simply recited and learn by heart.

In an attempt to improve the didactic training of the teachers, nine voluntary workers were sent to Saipu for variable periods between 1999 and 2007. Their objective was to propose an alternative teaching method, something which aroused the teachers’ interest and developed the pupils’ capacity to think, analyse and search for solutions by themselves.

This experiment convinced us that short-term voluntary stays, although appreciated, aren’t enough to generate real change and improvement. Kam For Sud and the school committee have therefore decided that from 2009 onwards, the didactic program should involve only adequately trained professionals staying for a minimum of 6 months, with the hope of stimulating new potentialities for the transmission of knowledge in the school.

The first experiment of this type was conducted by the Swiss-Italian teacher Laura Poretti, who stayed in Saipu from November 2009 to April 2010. A first internal account of here work, destined primarily to future voluntary workers and civilists is available here (italian) [pdf].

The didactic program and the stay of voluntary workers or, starting 2010 civilists, will continue as long as the community of Saipu continues to request it.

A new extension

After the construction of first extension in 2006 due to the augmentation in attending pupils, a new one is to be built in 2010.

In 2009, the Nepalese government decreed that all schools in the country should be classified as follows: primary school for the first five grades, secondary school for grades six to eight, and high school for grades nine to twelve. The school committee and Kam For Sud that all schools in the country should be classified as follows: primary school for the first five grades, secondary school for grades six to eight, and high school for grades nine to twelve. The school committee and Kam For Sud have decided to add the last two grades to the lessons offered in Saipu, allowing sufficiently motivated pupils to then access higher education.

The new building will be financed by Kam For Sud and the Nepalese government, each providing 50% of the total cost. The construction should be achieved by the end of 2010.