Parahu

The quality of education is very low in the public schools in Nepal. The situation is much worse in the case of some of the districts in Madhesh including Dhanusha. The problem is further compounded by low levels of school enrollment and retention and early marriage among girls. The highest level of education reached is the Primary level for 40.2% of the total population in the district.

COVID-19 has further escalated the loopholes in the education system and youth engagement. Data reveals that over 200 million children will stay out of school by 2030. At the onset of COVID-19, unemployment, and lack of engagement among the youth population is on the rise. 

The Musahar population in Nepal is in minority with a total of 2300000 of the total. With low literacy levels and living standards, their struggle to sustain basic needs is mostly covered by daily wage work.

A baseline survey of a total of 205 participants at a learning center that facilitates the education of Musahar children was taken in 2021. The survey questions were close-ended and structured questionnaires were asked to the respondents. The questions specifically targeted understanding the need of children in terms of economy, education, and health. Following were the major findings:

Finding 1: 68.18% of children belong to the age group 3 to 11 years old, 22.72% of children belong to the age group 12 to 15 years old and only 9.1% of children belong to the age group 16 to 18 years old.

Finding 2: A maximum number of children are in primary level education i.e. grades 1-8 despite their age and grade not being relatable. There are children at the primary level whose ages varied even in the range of 11 to 13 years. The percentage was 92.42% in the primary level whereas only 4.54% were from the secondary level i.e. grades 9-12. Children attending secondary level of education is fairly low. 

Finding 3: Of the total 205 children in the community, 132 of them are girls. 64.4% of the total children coming to the learning center are girls. 

Finding 4: The economic necessities of the families were covered maximum by family members working as daily wage laborers covering 81.82% of the respondents. 3.03% of family members worked and 15.15% have migrated to foreign countries for the purpose of income generation. Of the working members, their employment is not secured as a result of the daily wage work. The fulfillment of basic necessities is a daily struggle for the working population and their families. 

Similarly, a Diagnostic test conducted among the children to understand their learning levels showed children struggled in identifying letters and forming words, to begin with. 

Because of the family background, the children are less interested to learn, as a result of which it is hard for them to recognize letters. The childrens’ attitude toward education is bleak. Similarly, the learning center the children visit has a high student-teacher ratio, and rote learning is applied to engage the children. As a result of this, learning has become mundane for young learners. Similarly, it is quite challenging for the facilitators to facilitate daily lesson plans due to overcrowding and the childrens’ inability to learn.  

We are focused on the young people who are far from digital access. Our solution is based on in-person training where we embed technology. We are providing three months-long robotics and science-related workshops for young minds. Our solution is based on hands-on experiments with the resources available in their communities where we will include motors, led, wires, and sensors. Using these things we make the learning more interesting and practical for them. Our target group is beginner and intermediate level students. For beginners and students who already have exposure to school education, we will be using led, bulbs, and wires to make them familiar with the alphabet and word formation. We are engaging them in project-based learning to ensure that they achieve quality education. In this project, they will do the things by themselves using their own resources where they learn to embed sensors, motors, and batteries to develop a prototype.

Children belonging to the Dalit communities in the southern belt of Nepal will be primarily served through this challenge. Musahar communities whose literacy levels are low and the learning curve of the children is compromised will be our target population. A learning center in Dhanushadham caters to more than 250 children of a Musahar community at present in presence of 4 facilitators who are members of the same community. Due to the low teacher-student ratio, the learning level of the children is low. Rote learning as a method of teaching is used without laying individual focus on the children. The children attend the nearby public schools where a similar problem exists. To support the learning of these children as well as the facilitators we have proposed a solution that is contextual and utilizes locally available resources. 

We have already worked with 150 children from Kathmandu in STEAM education. We engaged them in hands-on experiments with the locally available resources. They are children with no access to digital platforms. They are mostly working as house workers in Kathmandu. Their academic performance was very low as compared to other students. It was hard for them to memorize the course of their study. We engaged them in robotics activities for three months. 

We plan to apply a similar approach to the proposed location. To make it easy for the children to understand their course of study, robotics will be applied by the use of local resources. Learning on their own will build their confidence and engage them in formal education.

The team is a group of 6 dynamic women representing diverse backgrounds of knowledge and expertise. With over 40 years of accumulated experience, the team is well-positioned to design and deliver the solution. The team has working experience in the development sector with the most vulnerable and marginalized communities in Nepal. The team has worked with children belonging to underserved communities in Nepal since 2012 and continues to do so even today. Similarly, human resources with educational and professional backgrounds in IT, machine learning, management, structural engineering, social work, law, and finance are the main components of the team leading the solution. 

To identify the needs of the community, especially the children, a needs assessment has been done in the area of our intervention. Similarly, a diagnostic test was conducted among the children to understand their learning levels. We have been working in this particular community since November last year.  

Other working areas of the team include working with multiple girls-centered organizations. To reduce the gender gap in the STEAM field, the team has had the opportunity to work with Unicef, Unicef South Asia, Nepal Telecommunication Authority, National Central University Taiwan amongst others. Two of the team members also work as a mentor of 1000 girls, 1000 futures program by the New York Academy of Sciences to mentor young girls from different parts of the world.

We are applying to this platform to get visible on global networks, build a network of like-minded solvers from similar contexts and backgrounds, and learn from other community leaders. We hope this platform will help us to learn from global experts. Nepal is still at a growing stage of technology. Our organization is led by young people so the tech support from experienced people will help to implement our work in a more effective way. At the same time, we also feel the need to be mentored by experts who can guide us in improving our business model. 

In addition to this, in case we receive financial support from the community, we will be able to connect the digitally challenged communities come to the forefront. 

As mentioned earlier, we are focusing on the communities that are far from digital access. Our innovation is mostly based on locally available resources where we embed technology. Use of materials like wood, bottle, pipe, paper, and clothes and integration of led, sensors, and other electronics will reengage the young learners. We believe engaging them on projects which can be developed by the things familiar from their childhood will make them understand their school curriculum better. Our solution is focused on supporting them to understand their school curriculum better and in the process support their learning graph.

Musahar communities are one of the most marginalized communities in Nepal so they lack facilitation services and developmental training to educate young minds, The educator does not get enough exposure to training. Therefore, we will primarily be training the teachers and facilitators on STEAM-based activities aligned with the Nepal Government’s curriculum. The educators will be responsible to facilitate the young minds. 

Our plan to to not limit our work in the Musahar community but we plan to expand our work to other Dalit communities of Nepal, where we are planning to collaborate with the local government. While working with marginalized communities, in the very beginning we can not expect to make a profit, so to make the solution financially sustainable we will collaborate with the local government. We believe this program will help to reengage young minds-on learning the basic skills that they are currently struggling with. It will develop their problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills. In this process, the children will be encouraged to work in a team, and build their own ideas on the application of theories. Doing the project themselves will build their confidence and curiosity about learning.

Impact Goals in the next year,

• Engagement with 600 children and bridging the gender gap in the STEAM field by working with 60% girls and 40% boys of the total size

• Support innovation and learning in education through locally available resources

• Support with coding and advanced robotics for children who has access to the internet

• Facilitate 21st-century skills to 600 children with proficiency in creative, computational, logical thinking, and problem-solving skills

• 80% improvement in literacy skills by the use of technology among children

In the next five years,

• Development of female leaders with expertise in STEAM education 

• Engagement in Dalit communities from all 7 provinces of Nepal 

• Engagement of children belonging to the Dalit communities of Nepal in STEAM education and mobilization of local resources for their reengagement

We wish to achieve the impact goals by not limiting our solution to a single community. We want to engage and empower children belonging to the Dalit communities in Nepal by the application of the solution in collaboration with local communities, the teachers and facilitators supporting the children, and the local government. 

In order to measure the progress, a MEAL and Communications Plan will be developed prior to the project execution. A proper project cycle with clear milestones and deliverables will be primarily defined. 

Assessment Tools to understand and identify the learning curve of the children in 3 different stages will be made and implemented

Monitoring of the project activities will take place periodically throughout the project cycle with a proper reporting mechanism in place

The learning and development of the project will be identified throughout assessments, interviews, case studies, and progress reports 

Measurable Indicators:

• Increase in the Learning Levels of children by 50>#/p###
• Engagement of local authorities to implement the solution in other localities 
• Use of local resources in technology
• Awareness about the use of technology to support the learning of the children
• Engagement of the youth population as teachers and facilitators to support STEAM education for children 

Objective: Reengaging students at higher risk of dropout post-COVID-19 on their learning curve

 Activities :

• Engaging them in fun-based STEAM activities

• Educating the local trainers and improving their teaching performance

• Awareness of the importance of 21st century STEAM skills to the parents

Short Term  Goal

• Create interest in education and learning

• Break their mental barrier that education is hard

• Parents will be aware of sending their children back to school

Long term Goal

• Expand our activities to other Dalit communities of Nepal

• Equip 21st century STEAM skills sets to the children

• Develop job readiness and equip children with future skills

• Bridge the gap between urban and rural students in STEAM courses

• Create role models and female leaders in STEAM education 

Improving the learning levels of children through the use of technology in a community that has low literacy levels and is digitally distant is the overall goal of the project. 

For the solution we are proposing, we are not using advanced technology. We are using the existing technology with locally available resources and making it innovative given the context our solution caters to. We are using basic robotics to educate the children. We are working with students who have no access to digital resources. We are using locally available resources like wood, paper, bottle caps and embedding these things with motor, led sensors. Our most used technologies are sensors, motors, led, parallel boards, resistors, and jumper wire. We are teaching them the working principle of these technologies and teaching them to assemble these things with available resources.

In the near future, we are planning to teach them coding and advanced robotics. We are planning to give them digital devices. After completing this milestone, we will train them in Scratch, Python, Javascript, and Arduino programming. We will educate them to develop games, websites, and electronics projects.

The solution is led by a group of women with diverse backgrounds and experiences in terms of education and professional engagements. A support team including men and women acts as advisors and supports the team in making strategies and decisions. 

The teams' approach is to become all-inclusive irrespective of gender, caste, ethnicity, professional background, and language. We apply this approach while identifying our participants, target population, and communities that we work with. Similarly, we also engage with the ecosystem of the participants including their parents, community members, and other agents of change. 

Youth as facilitators for the children are also our working population. Our work area is focused on making STEAM education accessible to the most marginalized and vulnerable communities in Nepal. 

This particular solution is targeted toward the children and youth of Musahar communities who are categorized as the Dalit population in Nepal. Highly marginalized by origin, they have zero to no access to technology that requires this solution to make use of local resources. 

Primarily, the solution will cater to the underserved children belonging to Dalit communities in Nepal. The starting point will be the Musahar community residing in the Dhanusha district.  

Our services are targeted at young girls and boys along with educational institutions in Nepal. We have designed our curriculum based on the different age groups of the learners to target the people who are financially strong. In major cities like Kathmandu, Pokhara, and Chitwan we have been providing online and in-person coding and robotics training. This is paid training. For sustainability, we are providing our courses as extracurricular activities for the private schools of Kathmandu. 

To reach out to the most marginalized community and remain sustainable, we are collaborating with the local government for their ICT fund.

Key Resources: Human Resources, Technological Devices

Key activities: Workshop and Training, Awareness Programs

Type of Intervention: Services and Workshops; Project-based Hands-on Workshop

Segments: Students, Teachers, Schools, and Local Government

Value Proposition: Engaging young minds from underserved communities in learning through fun-based STEAM activities

Impact Measures: Assessment Tools, MEAL Plan, Communications Plan, Reporting

Partners and Key stakeholders: Schools and CSOs

Channels: In-person training and Social Media

To make our project sustainable we have our own services-based program which is targeted at the students from major cities of Nepal. We provide a three-month-long coding program for children who are financially stable to pursue these courses. This program helps us to cover our daily administration expenses. Simultaneously, we also work with the local government to implement the STEAM courses in the identified schools that most need intervention in STEAM education. Currently, these two activities are playing a vital role in our sustainability.

Similarly, through this project we aim to achieve financial sustainability in the following manner: 

• Educating the local trainer; TOT for the educators

• Digitally implementing the courses in major cities to create fewer administrative engagements and focus on efficient delivery

• Collaborate with local government on their ICT fund

• Reaching out to potential donors and funders to tap into the CSR fund in the local market

During the pandemic, we launched a 3-month long training program that was delivered in 3 different installments. The method of delivery was virtual and the content was based on learning how to code. In this program, we were able to train 230 students. The cost of the training per participant was NPR 3000. The project was a major success on our end ensuring financial sustainability. This is one of the revenue-generating models of our work. Similarly, we have also been able to tap into the funding of local government and have been able to locally mobilize financial resources to engage with school-going children on STEAM education.