LONG before my ordeal in Qatar, I had wanted to make something of myself and make a difference in the lives of others from backgrounds similar to mine through education. Just two months before my incarceration, I had decided to return home to do just that.
So, returning to Nepal in May 2013, I was determined more than ever to help children of marginalized Nepalese realize their dreams, through quality education. One does not necessarily need lots of expensive and fancy resources for that, not in rural Nepal anyway.
At Community Members Interested (COMMITTED), we work directly with communities suffering from low quality education and significant migration to urban centers within the country and to countries abroad, such as Qatar.
To that end COMMITED had been promoting the holistic and sustainable development of target communities through the establishment of Social Business for Education (SBE) projects – projects that also contribute to raising the quality of their education.
Our current project site is Thangpalkot village in Sindhupalchok district. The indigenous population is the Tamang, another marginalized group.
In addition to suffering from discrimination because of their lower status in the caste system, the Tamangs are also some of the poorest in the country. They have been exploited and subjugated by the ruling elite in Kathmandu for the last century and half!
Part of that exploitative practice involved the initiation of girl-child trafficking of Tamangs from the district of Sindhupalchok! As you may have guessed, they still suffer from that because of poverty and lack of education.
And because of poverty, Sindhupalchok suffered the most casualties in the April earthquake. Almost a third of all deaths occurred in the district! The village of Thangpalkot lost all but 6 of the 600 houses!
Destruction of homes in Sindhupalchok ranges from 88 to 95% depending on the sources. That of course is not surprising when the foundations of their houses are thus:
Following the earthquake, COMMITTED has had to take a few steps back with our Social Business for Education project. We are now engaged in reconstruction. We have completed the reconstruction of one of the schools we work with and are assisting two others and fundraising for a fourth.
We have also been implementing sponsorship programs supporting children from marginalized communities, vulnerable to exploitation, such as Dalit children, girls and children of dead migrants.
In addition to all that, independently, I have been helping children apply for and win UWC Scholarships. I have also raised funds to help UWC-scholarship recipients attend UWCs. I am also involved in teacher training, working with science teachers to improve science teaching at government schools and raise the quality of their education.
My hope and goal, as that of COMMITTED, is that quality education will provide freedom to the children we serve, freedom to dream unfettered, and freedom to chart their own destinies, just as I have been able to do, instead of their destinies being decided for them by others as has been, and is, the case with thousands of marginalized Nepalese.
And that brings me to the end of this presentation. Should you want more information here’s where you can find them:
