Hello again from Nepal and thank you for choosing to follow me on my placement in Pokhara. I'm settling in well here and am getting used to the Nepali ways of life. Part of this means learning not to be too surprised when things don't go to plan and being flexible and adaptable - although to be honest, I think that's what being a VSO volunteer is all about anyway! I've had a very busy past few months in the schools since I last wrote and have lots to tell you about the difference that your kind donations are starting to make in the classroom, so I hope that you enjoy reading my news.
Dalit children and girls are discriminated against
As I said in my last blog, it's the most marginalised children in society that miss out on an education. Those worst affected are girls and Dalits (the lowest class of Nepal’s society) and Dalit girls are the most exploited of all.
Dalits have the lowest life expectancy of any other group in Nepal - just 48 years compared to the 69 years of the rest of the population. Dalit women die much more frequently in childbirth than non-Dalits, and it’s their own children under the age of five that are more likely to die from malnutrition and other preventable diseases.
Without an education, there is little promise for the future of girls and Dalit girls in particular. Including them within the schooling system and treating them equally from the outset of their education means that when they grow up they can at least earn a living if they choose to. It’s therefore my job for the next two years to challenge discrimination in the classroom and help teachers treat girls positively and fairly.
The challenge for Nepal’s poorest children
I’ve been running gender workshops for the teachers to help them identify ways in which girls are excluded at school so that we can develop more inclusive methods of teaching. We came up with far too many examples of how they are treated differently and it was a bit of a shock to hear them all, but it's important to recognise them in order to create change in the first place.
Examples include sitting in a separate part of the classroom, being taught different subjects to boys and using separate and different learning resources, and having far less time devoted to encouraging them and helping them learn, in the unfounded belief that boys are much more capable.
Helping children to understand the inequality around them. Having highlighted this for the teachers, my next task was to help the children themselves see the discrimination that exists in their classroom. In order to make a serious subject easy for them to understand, and to give it an element of fun, I decided to put on a puppet show to act out how girls are treated differently.
A representative from our partner organisation - the Nepal National Dalit Social Welfare Organisation (NNDSWO) who works to eliminate caste-based discrimination - came along to help me translate the story in Nepali so that I could perform it for the children in their own language.
Introducing inclusion
After the puppet show, I asked the children to draw some posters to show how they could all learn, play and eat together throughout the day, and then we pinned their posters to the walls to remind everyone of what they’d decided they wanted to change.
The teachers are really keen to develop this and one school was especially eager to put mixed seating arrangements in place as this can be done quickly and easily without taking time to establish.
One teacher also came up with the idea of every pupil clearing and tidying the classroom together at the end of the day - a simple yet effective way of mixing everybody together where Dalits, girls, and Dalit girls can touch and share the same resources. This was met with a lot of enthusiasm from the other schools and helped to generate other initiatives that each school could immediately put in place.
A Nepali style blessing!
The discrimination that exists in the classroom is so deep-rooted in old cultural beliefs that it pre-exists before children even begin school and before new teachers start working there. Running these workshops helped me to see that the vast majority of people really do want marginalised children to be treated equally at school - after all, they suffer enough outside of it as it is. I was really touched to receive a red tikka blessing (a red dot on the forehead that symbolises the third eye and is associated with spiritual enlightenment) from teachers at one of the schools as a token of their appreciation for my work in the classroom.
Thank you for supporting me on my placement here. I'll be in touch again soon to let you know how your kind gifts are helping to create even more welcome changes to children’s lives here.
Beth
