PROJECT OKHALDHUNGA
Our next project location is Taluwa in the district of Okahldhunga, about 250km East of Kathmandu or around 15-20 hours of driving...
This is a remote, economically marginalized area. Many of the subsistence farmers in this region are illiterate. Electricity, television, and vehicles are not available.
We practice a multi-faceted and integrated community-based approach – this means involving and educating the local community from the outset. We have 4 main programs and the goal is for the local community to eventually run these programs independently.
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Women's Empowerment
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Children's Development
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Health and Sanitation
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Youth Development
The reason for choosing an area in Eastern Nepal is a response to the following two points:
1) The Maoist insurgency between 1996-2006 left the Western part of Nepal especially vulnerable and as a result, this region received the most international support and attention
2) However, the Eastern part remains underprivileged. Villages mainly consist of socially marginalized and economically deprived communities. Considerable numbers of people are illiterate. Almost 90% of the people are involved in agriculture but lack technical skills and do not earn enough to secure their livelihood. Women are especially vulnerable; they lack skills to earn money and they cannot enjoy their full rights
VIN conducted health check focusing on women
Help us support and facilitate change in Okhaldhunga by donating today.
We do not yet have volunteer programs available in this area due to the lack of facilities for international volunteers, but we are working on it and aim to do pilot volunteer programs towards the end of 2013.
If you are interested in volunteering in Okhaldhunga, please let us know.
Teacher Training in Okhaldhunga, March 2013
In Spring 2013, our collaborative partner "Partners in Sustainable Learning" went with us to Taluwa VDC in the district of Okhaldhunga to conduct teacher training to 22 teachers from the program Early Childhood Development.
Taluwa is the first VDC* in Okhaldhunga we will be working with, followed by Bhadaure VDC and then Thulachhap VDC.
Most public schools in Nepal have untrained and unqualified teachers. It's estimated that more than 60% of the teachers - mostly at primary school level - have not had any formal training. We therefore aim to train and educate these teachers who will lay the foundation for a child's education. We want to break the cycle of poor education.
*VDC Village Development Committee is the lower administrative part of its local development ministry, and it has a status as an autonomous institution and authority for interacting with the more centralised institutions of governance in Nepal.
Health and Sanitation
We are yet to start our health and sanitation programs in Okhaldhunga.
We plan to start end 2013/early 2014. We would love to begin our projects but we are restricted by funding.
We will be posting our budget plan soon.
Children's Development
In March, our education partner, "Partners in Sustainable Learning" conducted Early Childhood Development training for 22 teachers in Okhaldhunga. More than 170 children will receive quality pre-school education from this year (2013).
Often the ECD centers are ill-equipped and they are seldom child-friendly. Part of our ECD program is to involve their parents as well and teach them the importance of healthy and well-stimulated children.
Women's Empowerment
Women and girls are key to solving poverty.
The empowerment process does not only bring out the confidence of the women, but will also stimulate leadership and teach them about independence, initiative, self-motivation, and raise awareness among them about how to take care of oneself.
Read more about why we should invest in girls and women - click here
Youth Empowerment
We aim to inspire the youth to become proactive by encouraging them to get involved in children's development programs, women's empowerment, health and sanitation projects.
We will also be working with a partner called Ecoprise whose goal is to generate economic, environmental and social impact through products and services that are sustainability-focused. Our model is designed around the scaled distribution of environmental products and solutions.
"We train young entrepreneur based in rural areas to run business and give them access to technologies and products that are useful for their communities. They have so sell those products with profits, create jobs and help in growth of local economy." (Bhuwan KC, CEO and founder of Ecoprise.)