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In Nepal, forty percent of school-going age children have never been to school, seventy percent of the schooled children drop-out before completing the primary school cycle (I-V), sixty to seventy percent of class (grade) ten graduates cannot pass the School Leaving Certificate Examination (a nation-wide test at the end of grade X which was the final year of secondary school until 1994), and about sixty six percent of students who pass the School Leaving Certificate Examination (SLC) cannot go on to higher education.

Renu Primary School project is an education project of Samaaj Sahakaarya. SS is an organization formed by the local residents from Aurahi-7, Saptari to respond to socio-economic development in Kataiya through implementation of community based integrated projects targeting the youth, women, elderly, adults and children.

SS’s main concern is the realization of sustainable peace and development in which the youth, women, elderly, adults and children are involved in positive activities that will ensure socio-economic welfare in the entire community. The vision of SS is peaceful coexistence and development in which everyone participates equally and effectively in problem and solution identification and where local communities, governments and other developmental bodies facilitate and carry out skills transfer to the younger generation.

In order to realize its goals, SS has designed primary school education project that will see construction of 8 class rooms, kitchen, latrines and 1 administration office block, but also equip the school gradually with teaching materials, such as text books, supply of water.

Project rationale

Developments do not come to these remote parts of Nepal easily. The major constraint for children and parents is that the most nearby primary schools are expensive as they do not have any specific source of income.

SS has taken the initiative to change this situation and is now approaching organizations in order to improve the conditions for children who are joining primary schools in the nearby villages.

The SS’s strategy is to construct a day primary School in Kataiya for boys and girls respectively. Implementation will include construction, provision of teaching materials, such as text books for all subjects, and clean and safe drinking water and they will be in two phases of the project.

In phase (1) of the project, SS will construct 8 classrooms which will have one door and four windows each and will be 27 metres long and six metres wide. The walls and the floor will be made from locally baked bricks; the doors and windows of wood and the roof of concrete. There will also be need to construct kitchen, an administration block comprising of head master’s office, his deputy and a staff room, six toilets and two staff houses. Once construction work is completed, classroom will be fitted with chairs in phase two of the project to prepare the school to start operating learning and teaching activities in 2017. The classrooms will be used to teach the children in the morning provide pre-vocational trainings for youths in the afternoon and provide adult education classes (especially for mothers) in the evening. The SS team will mobilize parents and local community members to make bricks for the buildings and contribute other locally available materials towards this project.

This project will also provide coping mechanisms and starting life strategies to the youth.

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