On 9/6/2008, Uttam Sharma, the 2007-2008 Selection Committee Chair dissolved the Committee because most of the student selection related work for 2008 is complete. We would like to thank Basu D Gnawali, Ashish Hada, Maheshwor Kafle, Pukar Malla, Bhusan Neupane, Anil Pachhai, Uttam Sharma, Nisha Thapa and everyone involved in the selection committee. A new committee for 2009 will be formed later this year.
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Contributors: Atul, Bidhur and Maheshwor
The volunteers for Campaign for Education (CE), NCEF’s sister organization, are closest to the action in Nepal. They conduct all of NCEF’s yearly activities on the ground. Naturally, working conditions in Nepal differ from that in the US, which make for unique challenges and opportunities. Recently, Mr. Bidhur Dhungana, Secretary of CE, successfully completed a task that most of us thought would be far easier than it turned out to be. His perseverance prevailed in the face of frustration, and this is his story.
Every year, there is a very important step that CE completes, which typically happens without much fanfare. As a technical matter, CE’s budget must be approved by the Government of Nepal through the Social Welfare Council (SWC). Only after receiving approval from the government can CE spend NCEF money in Nepal. So this means that if there is a problem in gaining approval, NCEF children will not be able to access their scholarships.
This year, there was an unforeseen obstacle. A complaint was filed against NCEF with the Patan District Development Committee (DDC), which is the local government entity responsible for approving and coordinating expenditures at the district level. In order to get necessary approval to work in the area, we needed a “Complaint Release” from the Patan DDC. This is a document saying that the complaint was addressed, and that our approval should go ahead. Bidhur was summoned to the office for clarification on the matter, and the “Complaint Release” was subsequently issued.
Once the complaint was properly handled, Bidhur needed to take the necessary steps to get SWC approval. The required report is quite detailed. According to Bidhur, who prepared and submitted the report, the document was made up of “all essential papers of CE, which includes the Audit report, Complaint Release from Patan DDC, Constitution of CE, Certificate from DDC and SWC, list of Board members, and a detailed description about CE assets and expenditures from previous year.”
After submitting the proposal on behalf of CE, Bidhur noted the following: “It was my basic duty to visit the SWC to gain proper approval. The director is a very sincere and hard-working person, who went thoroughly through our application. The director even took time to make comments on every point. There were many areas to discuss before gaining SWC consent. I needed to provide information about the areas in which we work, the recipients of scholarships, the selection criteria, how the selection team is formed, why and how we issue scholarships, the duration of the scholarships, activities that precede selection, post-selection operations of CE volunteers and evaluation processes.”
During the approval process year, we encountered a new requirement. We needed to disclose the names and addresses of the children who were being awarded scholarships. Alarm bells immediately went off. Will disclosure endanger the children? What are our responsibilities as far as protecting the children’s privacy? Many questions came up and led to a long discussion about whether we could do this or not. We decided that we needed to ensure the children’s privacy as best we could. Ultimately, as Bidhur explains, “I did not want to disclose the names and addresses of our students, but SWC did not listen to me and insisted that the list of names and addresses was a basic requirement which could not be ignored.”
Bidhur remained firm that we needed to protect the privacy of the children and asked SWC for a letter to this effect. A compromise was reached. Bidhur explained that while “SWC is not ready to write us a letter to guarantee the privacy of CE students, they assured me that they would not disclose the names of students to anybody without official approval from CE.”
With this assurance on hand, NCEF submitted the names and addresses, and CE was able to gain necessary approval.
As you can imagine, this was an arduous process. In addition, the political situation was far from favorable with daily protests and severe petroleum shortages. Bidhur kept following up, but the process lasted months.
And what does he think of his experience now? “It was the best assignment…though it took more time to get permission than in the past, I have learned. Due to the long exercise and continued visits to SWC the director…the director called me personally to pick up the permission letter. He gave me some ideas to put in… the proposal paper [which will be shared next time]. When I got the paper I thanked him for his support.”
Congratulations Bidhur, for a job well done. |
“One pen! One pen!” As any trekker knows, children are everywhere along the mountain trails of Nepal. They have the good fortune to be born and brought up in surroundings among the most spectacular on the planet, but this very location threatens to deny them many of the opportunities of the modern world.
The standard “One pen!” greeting is in fact quite irrelevant to the children’s education, because schools use chalk and writing slates. However, as an indicator of priorities, it is very telling that if Nepalese parents teach their children to beg for one thing, it is a pen before rupees or sweets. Villagers are always ready to band together to provide the materials and work required to build the primitive schoolrooms which are often the village centre-piece, and which can be seen in the most impressive locations, if somebody else can provide a teacher.
Nepalese parents, like parents the world over, want a better life for their children than they themselves have. As in many developing countries, where even primary schooling has until recently been quite exclusive, education is viewed widely as the means to get ahead. Indeed, there is a visible pride among the adults at the sight of lines of tiny, unaccompanied school pupils, in their immaculate uniforms, on the trails every morning and afternoon. This pride has also been inculcated in the children themselves, and may be an important factor in maintaining their enthusiasm — the daily school commute, through a steep, green landscape of terraced fields and forests, can easily be over an hour each way.
Economics, however, are not on the parents’ side. Sadly, Nepal remains close to being a failed state with respect to its ability to provide basic services to its citizens. A year of schooling for a child costs $100, the price of a restaurant meal for two in the developed world, but a huge investment in a country where the average income is $1-2 per day, and a cost which falls squarely on the parents. Many families with more than one child cannot afford to send all of them to school.
Even in a region where sexism is not encoded in the religion, this is usually to the detriment of the girls, because an educated boy is expected to have a higher earning potential. While trekkers may often see small children helping around the farm, or carrying miniature loads on the trails, the need to have all hands at work is generally not the main reason why they are not in school: it is simply the lack of means to send them there.
All of this, however, concerns the primary level. The main factor affecting secondary education is a basic shortage of school resources, specifically of bricks, mortar, and teachers. For this type of opportunity, children from the mountain regions must be sent to live in Kathmandu or other towns. Such a dislocation is usually viewed neither as an insurmountable logistical obstacle nor as a permanent loss of young blood to a different existence, because many Nepalese have “double lives” both in the city and in their home villages. However, the financial barriers, and thus the exclusivity of higher education, mount at every step. A further danger with this age group is that the children might be old enough to do “real”, unaccompanied work rather than to continue their studies. Fortunately, it remains far more common to see older children in this category working in the family shop than to see underage porters struggling with their oversized loads – a circumstance to look out for, but not one I have yet had to rule out on any of my own expeditions.
Where do trekkers enter the equation? The tourism sector constitutes one third of the Nepalese economy and is, for ordinary people, quite simply “where the money is.” With no English-language qualifications, the only entry point for subsistence farmers is to seek out porter work, often a cold and back-breaking enterprise in mountains far from their home valleys, but nonetheless clearly a sacrifice your porters find well worth making for their children’s education. Importantly, a trekker’s role is to contribute to the local economy, and not to skew it: care is required not to pay over the going rate, as such inflation causes direct hardship for the many hill people who rely on the porter industry to carry all of their staples. Your extra money is far better directed to a Nepalese charity or foundation, be it for health, education, the environment, or any other cause.
The fact that economic progress is possible as a result of trekking and climbing activities can be seen through the Sherpa people, the natives of the Khumbu Valley. Living at the foot of Mt. Everest,they were the original porters, but now rather few still do this kind of work: some are high-altitude porters, but most run tea-houses or trekking agencies, and Sherpa children have hospitals, schools, and a strong support network for their higher education in Kathmandu. None of the current porters, who come from more distant foothill regions, want their children to be porters either, and for them the opportunity of education is the key.
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Bruce Normand specializes in alpine-style ascents of technical routes in the high mountains. From Alaska to  Patagonia and Japan to New Zealand, with long stops in Bolivia, Peru, and especially the European Alps, he has wandered the globe in pursuit of this addiction. However, for uncharted territory he makes annual migrations to Asia, where he has recorded more than 10 first ascents and numerous new routes on 6000m peaks in India, Pakistan, Xinjiang, and Tibet. In 2007, he became the first Scotsman to summit K2. In Nepal, he has made two first ascents, climbed five new routes, and trekked in regions including the Dolpo, Rolwaling, Khumbu, and Kangchenjunga Ranges. With a PhD in theoretical physics from MIT, Bruce is a roving academic who can be found in the ivory towers of the world’s leading universities when not in the mountains.
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