Mitrataa Lincoln Friendship Project

Panauti
1) In a Nutshell
Mitrataa is partnering with Shree Panauti Lower Secondary School in Panauti to
increase the quality of education provided to the village students through teacher
training, increase regular attendance of the students and ensure the students
have the materials they need for a practical, successful, relevant education.
2) About the school
Shree Panauti Lower Secondary School has around 220 students from Nursery to
Class 8. Over 75% of the students are girls. This is because if a family can afford
to send their boys to Kathmandu to study in an English medium school, they do.
But we are happy to see that girls are staying in school and we want to support
the school to ensure it is able to give the students a good quality education.
3) Core challenges
a) Nutrition - Many of the students come to school hungry as they have to
work in the mornings. It is difficult for them to concentrate.
b) Attendance - During core planting or harvesting seasons, the children do
not come to school as they are required to work in the fields.
c) Lack of resources/training Getting text books and stationery for the
children is a challenge for the school. As a government school, it is taught
in Nepali and the teachers do not have the training to teach in English or
to use learner-focused education.
4) How it will work
Mitrataa will be working with the school in a number of different ways:
a) Training of teachers we will run various training workshops and
activities with the teachers to help them provide more learner-focused
education to the students;
b) Volunteers we will be sending some of our SLC graduates and our class
11 and 12 students to teach in the school for different periods of time to
help build the childrens confidence in English;
c) Attendance incentives we will be providing incentives to the students
to attend school which will also allow them to buy stationery and other
items for themselves. For every day the students attend school, they will
be given a token worth 20 rupees. They can use these tokens at special
stores in Panauti and exchange them for copies, pens, school shoes and
other school related items; and
d) Community engagement we will be working with the school and the
local community to clean up the river and to teach the students
community leadership and problem identification skills.
5) Opportunities for Lincoln Students to get involved
I suggest we run it in the same was as we did at Bal Mandir a group come once
a month to spend a few hours in Panauti at the school. Depending on the size of
the Lincoln group, we could divide into 3 or 4 groups:

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a)
b)
c)
d)

Financial literacy some maths games;

English for life building their confidence in communicating in English;
Leadership activities and workshops;
Nutrition/hygiene general life skills.

We can also work on the community engagement project together with Lincoln if
youre interested.
6) Benefits to Lincoln
a) You know how Mitrataa works we have worked well together before;
b) Panauti is not too far from Kathmandu so can easily be done on a
Saturday but at the same time it enables the students to get out of
Kathmandu and impact some village childrens lives; and
c) By teaching leadership and community engagement skills, it will also
benefit the Lincoln students with their own skills.
We are excited about the possibility of working together with you again!
Any questions or suggestions, please let us know. This is a new project for us so
we anticipate some teething problems! But we are confident that the school is
keen, the teachers are ready and the students are excited. It will be a fun
project!
With gratitude
Bec Ordish
9803938164
3 June 2015

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