Education | Olga's Promise Is that All Children in Nepal Will Have Access to Education

NYF makes education and self-sufficiency possible for Nepali children who have no other hope. We give scholarships to destitute children in rural Nepal, disabled kids who need to attend special schools, and many other children, from kindergarten through college or vocational training.

• Our students attend day school in remote villages and urban Kathmandu,boarding school, and college.

• NYF's Vocational Education and Career Counseling center enables youth to identify their strengths and find rewarding careers, despite Nepal's unemployment rate of around 50%.

• Many of the children we support are orphans or disabled.

• NYF uplifts entire communities by training teachers and improving schools.

• We also created an innovative program for highly talented and motivated girls of the Dalit or untouchable caste, which has been discriminated against and shut out from education for centuries.

Education is the only way to break the bonds of poverty for destitute, disabled, or orphaned children in Nepal. This is especially true for girls, who are often illiterate, married off before they are teenagers, and spend the rest of their lives bearing children and working endless hours. Most Nepali women are illiterate.

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Modern education in Nepal began with the establishment of the first school in 1853; this school was only for the members of the ruling families and their courtiers. Schooling for the general people began only after 1951 when a popular movement ended the autocratic Rana family regime and initiated a democratic system. In the past 50 years, there has been a dramatic expansion of education facilities in the country. As a result, adult literacy (age 15+) of the country was reported to be 48.2% (female: 34.6%, male: 62.2%) in the Population Census, 2001, up from about 5% in 1952–54. Beginning from about 300 schools and two colleges with about 10,000 students in 1951, there now are 49,000 schools (including higher secondary), 415 colleges, five universities, and two academies of higher studies. Altogether 7.2 million students are enrolled in those schools and colleges who are served by more than 222,000 teachers.

Despite such examples of success, there are problems and challenges. Education management, quality, relevance, and access are some of the critical issues of education in Nepal. Societal disparities based on gender, ethnicity, location, economic class, etc. are yet to be eliminated. Resource crunch has always been a problem in education. These problems have made the goal of education for all a challenge for the country.