Where I worked, why I chose that place, what I did, and how it was like, …
- Teddy Smile
- Jun 7, 2020
- 7 min read
My workplace was a community center in a village about 1H30 from Kathmandu. I did not work in a school, but I did teach a little in a non-formal program for drop-out students. The aim of my projects was mainly to look after those who have been left behind by mainstream education, and whose empowerment could greatly improve the quality of life for the whole community. The main beneficiaries of SCLC are boys aged 16-24 that dropped out of school to sustain their families, they come from villages to Pharping in order to get access to a second chance of education. Most of them stay for 2 years and aim at finishing grade 12 until they go back to their villages to continue caring for their families. SCLC hopes that in the years that they are away, they can get a diploma in “normal” school, but also training in the “school of life”, meaning what it means to earn and manage money, cook and care for everyone on the project, take responsibility, for example, to care for the bees, take out the goats, drive the vegetables to the market, milk the cows etc...
The “bottle house” is the name for the home where the 15 boys and 2 girls live. The name comes from the fact that some of the dormitories, the classroom, and the office are made entirely out of mud and recycled glass bottles. It’s a really eco-friendly and very strong way to build, the houses withstood the 2015 earthquakes and monsoon seasons since 2009.
SCLC is generally very preoccupied with raising awareness on the climate crisis, the project has a wastewater collection pont that’s connected to the lower fields, a dry compost toilet, and solar panels connected to the kitchen lights.
On the farm, tools and covers are made to last more than one season and considering what most farmers use as chemicals on their fields in Nepal, it’s also important to know that SCLC is trying to the best of their ability ( they are of course dependant on a competitive yield in order to sell on the market), to not use inorganic fertilizers at all.
The “Open school” didn’t only welcome youth, but also women who got married early and therefore couldn’t finish school, or old ladies who had never been in school at all. 2 Hours a day there was a class in the Women school, where they could learn to read and write.
In the Women School, I couldn’t really be of much use as they were learning basics in English and my Nepali wasn’t good enough to do the translations of course. Starting off with students that are completely new to the language asks particular skill of the teacher as they are so likely to think they’re not progressing. I taught at the Open School, where students were (on paper) already in their 5th year of learning English, and while I personally thought my students to be Shakespeare I also noticed that other teachers must’ve criticized them a shit ton.
Nepal in general for me was a place where many things were uncertain, and therefore what was important became more clear. Similarly, my work in SCLC was flux but I have been disciplined and focussed in a way I had never been before, the people I worked with showed me that most people I know and I myself ought better to take all of our so-called problems, and put them in quotations.
SCLC was among the first organizations to open something like the « School of second chance » as we have it in Luxembourg. A place where school drop-outs get a chance of reintegration into formal school, in some way. In Nepal, almost all students drop out because of poverty, so the students I met were nothing like the stereotype of a drop-out at all. The so-called Open school offered a condensed school program to drop outs aged 16-20. Thats four years of school, made possible almost entirely by volunteers. For grades 10-12, it was the high school teachers offering to take on the Open school students in their free periods, two hours a day. However, for grades 8 and 9, the Open school was short on staff. Therefore Bimala who was eighteen and in her second-year bachelor of education at the community college (also part of SCLC), taught all the younger students every day except Sunday, from three to five. Bimala is eighteen, she does this after her own college (from 6 am to 9 am), voluntarily.
Bimala was teaching Math, Nepali, Public health, Accounting, and Computer Science. I did English, as this was the only thing I could help with. I did English lessons about twice a week, quite informally as I refused to do it like it’s done in normal high school. I looked up videos, tried to find ways to explain grammar easily, wrote practice sheets (mostly I didn’t have a printer to copy).
Though It is widely known by now that teaching opportunities in schools for foreign volunteers generally do more harm than good, I believe I can honestly say my being there in the Open school was “clean”, I was able to assist Bimala who was volunteering just like me. I saw my my English crashcourse wasn’t going to become their magic weapon against poverty. Then again I never had skill and tools to have a noticeable impact, I did as well as I could to just talk to the students, make sure that my lessons were something a little more fun than their usual schoolwork, most of all I tried to convince them that they’re just as capable of learning as anyone else.
Was that hard? Hell yeah, I often lacked both context and experience, and generally, I often caught myself wishing for better books and better teachers. Really it’s a great achievement that in just one generation the amount of years in school has often gone from 0 to 12 (highschool diploma), many of the children in my village had parents who were illiterate (Literacy rate in Nepal is less than 60%), that development is quite impressive and contrary to what I thought, quite fast as well.
Rid yourself of your inherent bias that what is closest to what we value as good in Luxemburg is also the good in Nepal.
As a matter of fact, the community school in my village was doing far better than good: they had a cheap school lunch, scholarships to children from low-income families, and while I was there 15 girls got a scholarship for university.
One thing I want to make very clear is that anyone thinking about volunteering should be very very very careful about these « teaching » opportunities, in order for them to have a truly empowering impact you need to be very very boss, know the language, have experience on how to engage kids that are very quiet and have loads off backbone because you’ll take quite a lot of hits.
As this criterion is hard to come by, I’d say avoid working in a school (or orphanage!!), few to no truly responsible NGO would allow you to work as a teacher if you’re not one, and it takes a lot of effort to supervise a foreign person working with kids, meaning that you can easily find yourself in very challenging situations alone, which is a recipe for disaster.
If you should team up with the SNJ they’ll surely mention that issue to you, and advise you as to what you have to be careful about when you choose where to work, all of the projects being social there will be interactions with kids on most, you can work to play games and plan programs for special occasions, without getting involved with the school that they have for themselves, before and after you’re there.
No matter how much you’ll end up working with people, I can assure you you’ll be surprised as to how much your communication skills are tested and developing along the way.
If you’re living in a village with very few foreigners like mine, the water you’re thrown in goes from cold to ice cold. Of course, it’s much more authentic, but there is also no break from being completely foreign. I had moments where I was really glad we had a supermarket where I could get some Oreos, similarly, it can do you good if you can hop off to the tourist areas now and then, to recharge on some parts you associate with the home so to say. I chose the village over the city, mainly because it was more authentic, people worked traditional jobs and I could be of help on the farm. Kathmandu is really crowded and loud, I loved to visit but the village was just more my type, it really depends on the character. Having leisure time is no part of the culture of poverty (ain’t nobody just going walking, or to the lake, or restaurants), so keep in mind that you’ll not be mobile enough in a village to go do what you would normally do very easily.
Lastly, my job was also on the farm attached to Bittlehouse. The residential students worked every day after school (11-2) in the fields. We planted potatoes, cauliflower, ladyfingers, coriander, tomatoes, eggplant,...
During the winter months, a lot of grass and leaves had to be collected for the cows and goats. Someone had to cook each day for all the 20 people, sometimes there was a lot of maintenance to do. My work here was to help whenever I knew how to, and for the rest, I got to come up with ideas on improving the farm, many of our ideas were on “try-out” stage, Bottlehouse was always changing. This made working on a young and dynamic project really fun, with the little drawback that people come and go quickly, leaving some of the work unfinished.
I was lucky to be included in the planning of future projects. I did some writing here and there, a case study and a research paper on how large-scale concepts can be adapted to our project.
NGO stuff always involved loads of reporting. Before the project there’s a need assessment, then a description of activities, afterwards an impact study,...
Here are some examples of my work (drop any comments!:):
Conceptualized log-term aims of the project
Insight of what life in a marginalized community is like, and how it can be improved
Indignation of the monoplozied agricultural market where the farmer is irresponsiblized for his own land
I couldn’t finish the majority of what I would’ve wanted, partly because it just wasn’t the right time and place in march, or because managing projects on my own was harder than I anticipated, and of course, I left a month early.
Corona numbers are growing by the hundred each day lately, it’s quite frightening when you understand that this crisis will set back development in Nepal for another years, like the war did, and then the earthquake. To all Nepalis, I’m thinking of you and hoping with you that despite everything, people will rise.
In Friendship.
Tilly Schaaf
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