School Building Project

SHREE NAVAJYOTI THAM SECONDARY SCHOOL

Parbat District, Dhaulagiri near Pokhara, Nepal

Project to build Four Classrooms

A few years ago Mount's Bay Rotary fundraised to build a school in rural Nepal. When we started it was a small primary school a 10 kilometre walk from the nearest town.  A new school was built and it is now thriving with 3 teachers and about 70 children, due largely to the enthusiastic support the Rotary Club received from the local community in West Cornwall.

We then had a cry for help from another school, this time a larger secondary school and the Rotary Club decided to take up the challenge. This school now has over 300 students and 17 teaching staff. 11 of these are paid by the government and 6 from donations and villagers’ contributions. The school takes all tribes and castes living locally and some financial help is given to dalit (lower caste) children, all girl students, mentally and physically handicapped children and particularly talented children.

The school has a catchment area covering 5 villages.  School resources include 9 computers (with internet), a library, electricity, drinking water, toilets and a teachers’ room. There are 10 year grades and 60% of the children pass the School Leaving Certificate taken in the final year, grade 10. The school wishes to add 2 grades to the present 10 so that they will achieve Higher Secondary School status. Government policy requires this or they will be reduced to primary school status meaning that older children would have to travel further to complete their education.  Four of the original classrooms were in such a dilapidated state that they had to be evacuated in bad weather and have now been demolished.  It was essential for these to be rebuilt for the school to achieve the higher status. 

Mount's Bay Rotary provided £9,000 towards the cost of rebuilding the classrooms which are now complete.  With the help of a £500 grant from the Rotary District’s Foundation Fund, we were able to send a further £1,800 towards equipping the new classrooms. The equipment purchased included desks, a carpet for the toddlers class and English text books. This means that the Club has sent a total of £10,800 to the school. The classrooms and equipment are in use and the school is looking forward to obtaining Secondary School status.

The new classrooms were built using reinforced concrete strong enough to withstand earthquakes and all materials were purchased locally and the villagers shared the workload free of charge during the construction. They carried building materials, collected and split stones, did foundation work, mixed cement and helped the craftsmen.