CURRENT PROJECT ACTIVITIES
The illustrations on this page show the evolution of the Majuwa schoolhouse located in the Budhakhani VDC during the past two decades. Budhakhani is one of the northernmost VDCs of the southern Mahabharat region. In Nepal, the government does not build schools in rural villages, it will provide teachers and pay their salaries, however, the construction of suitable physical classroom facilities is the responsibility of the community, where the school is to be located. Furthermore, not every village is eligible for the establishment of a schoolhouse. Only villages with greater population density are usually selected as education centres. The Majuwa village is located on a moderately steep hill with no level ground available to be suitable for the construction of a schoolhouse. Thus the villagers spent about eight months of hard labor, as illustrated in the bottom picture, cutting away large section of the hillside to create a level ground on which to build the schoolhouse.
The picture below shows the initial fully functional school that the villagers were able to construct with their own resources in 1985, which was the same year we have initiated development activities within the southern Mahabharat region. During the intervening years, we have trained a number of Majuwa villagers as water system tradesmen. These tradesmen have provided the Majuwa community with a link to NSP and the opportunity to seek our assistance with the construction of a schoolhouse. The picture above shows the new Majuwa schoolhouse constructed with NSP assistance in 1989.
Although the primary level education in Nepal was up to grade five, due to lack of funds and too many requests for assistance, with the exception of the Sano Pokhara schoolhouse where we established our Mahabharat field office and storage facility, all primary schools constructed within the southern Mahabharat with our assistance had only three classrooms. However, as the enrolment grew, the benefiting communities began to seek assistance with improvements to their existing schools. At the time when insurgents gained full control of the southern Mahabharat region, because of security concerns, we had to suspend our assistance with the construction of drinking water system. Thus, we were then able to allocate those funds to assist with improvements to existing schools.
At the time we initiated development assistance to the southern Mahabharat region, we have adopted the fibre-concrete roofing technology developed in the UK for all schools constructed with our assistance. The tiles require a relatively lightweight wooden substructure, about equal to corrugated steel sheets, thus saving trees. The tile roofs also provide better insulation against heat and rain noise than corrugated steel sheets. Another great feature of the fibre-concrete roofing is that we can add classrooms to existing schools seamlessly. An example of this is illustrated in the top picture showing the Majuwa schoolhouse following the addition of three more classrooms. If you examine the illustration very closely, you can identify the section of the school that represents the old schoolhouse, where the cement pointing on the masonry walls below the windows became slightly discolored during the two decades since the schoolhouse was constructed.
Michael R. Rojik, Executive Director
E-mail: projects-info@nepal-school-projects.org
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