Education

LEGAL EDUCATION 

Legal Education is conducted at the national level to put pressure on the government to improve its court system and change its discriminatory laws. At the same time, WF holds workshops to inform women about existing discrimination within the Nepali legal system and the kinds of rights that are left protected and unprotected by it. The informal programs inspire women to form groups, working toward common goals.

FINANCIAL EDUCATION

Financial Education is provided in non-formal classes, where the practical issues of financial management and the basic principles of running a business are discussed. The skills that are taught include opening a bank account, creating budgets, and learning to monitor production expenditures and turnover. WF integrates skill enhancement programs with financial management training, so that women can be truly self-sufficient.

ADULT LITERACY CLASSES

WF conducts non-formal literacy programs for men and women. Our participants in the classes are of ages ranging from 15 to 50 or 60. There is no maximum age limit. The main objective of these programs is not to get the participants admitted to a formal school, but to teach language through practical discussions. Essentially, the programs are designed to teach functional literacy skills applicable to daily village life. WF believes that a theoretical discussion of language would not be nearly as effective, and would frustrate participants enough to leave the program. The literacy program includes information about violence against women and human rights. The opportunity to raise awareness about women's issues is made all the more important as many of the classes have male students.

The Women's Foundation is running about 30 non formal classes for the adult women of the society. In each group there are about 20 women. In this way there are more than 600 women who are presently getting the opportunity to learn to read and write. The informal classes in the district are being provided to those women who are not very capable of doing her work, due to illiteracy. These women are the women who did not get the chance to start their own business from the revolving fund that the Women's Foundation has provided. After having learnt to read and write, the Women's Foundation will give them the opportunity to start their business from the revolving fund. In this way the Women's Foundation is providing equal opportunities to the women of the village for their empowerment. The women targeted for the informal classes are basically the poor and disadvantaged communities of the particular district.

Instead of memorization and hard and fast grammar rules, participants learn to read and write as they learn to coordinate and work in a group. Some groups choose to design their curriculum to be similar to our skills training programs. We encourage this active participation in deciding how the group will learn language skills. We also fully support the exchange of information and skills among participants so that people can learn in an open atmosphere, sharing ideas. All of our classes, no matter how they weight their lessons, will learn about the Nepali legal system, environmental issues, gender issues, and will talk about social problems. In this way, the participants learn to read and write in a way that seems practical and sensible to the group. We also offer post-literacy classes, which ensure greater retention of skills over time.

CHILD LITERACY CLASSES

WF also conducts non-formal literacy classes for children. These classes are designed for children between the ages of 8 and 15, and are designed somewhat differently than the adult literacy classes. They are offered to children who have had no opportunity for school, but they assume that with some basic training, these children could be admitted to a formal school to continue their education. Our classes are intensive: they take place in the morning, two hours a day, six days a week. These children can learn very quickly, and after only nine months, many of them are ready to attend school. At this point, we shift our focus from basic reading and writing to skills necessary for attending school. Because our program is non-formal, it is run very differently from schools, and therefore the children need some orientation and training about how they will be expected to behave if their admission is to be successful.

For the next three months, we run this "discipline training," called a Bridging Course. After the full year has been completed, children who apply for admission and are accepted will go to formal schools. Children who are not accepted stay with the WF facilitator and learn practical skills in a program very similar to our skills development training.

GENDER WORKSHOPS

Gender Workshops conducted by WF are designed to raise awareness of gender issues in Nepali society and to give participants the practical skills needed to change their circumstances. The training programs are adapted to be appropriate for a wide range of participants, including the general population, community leaders, and future gender workshop facilitators. The workshops discuss power dynamics in relationships between women and men, the current situation of women throughout the country, and the specific issues that participants face. If the participants are rural women, illustrations are used to emphasize the points being made. Many women who attend these trainings are isolated in their village and assume that women around the world must endure the same hardships that they face. The gender workshops attempt to dispel these assumptions. Workshops conducted for political, cultural, and social leaders aim to analyze the same problems from a political and policy point of view. In these workshops, international laws and examples from other countries are used to stress the need for change in Nepal.
WF works in coordination with many GOs, NGOs and INGOs to address gender issues at a national level. The Foundation believes that to effectively empower women, a series of integrated programs should be conducted in cooperation with national and international organizations working toward a similar mission.

HYGIENE & SANITATION PROGRAMS

Many areas of Nepal, both rural and urban, have poor hygiene and sanitation. However, five districts in the mid and eastern regions of the country have especially poor hygiene and sanitation education and facilities. WF focuses our efforts in these areas, where we teach people about the problems caused by lack of hygiene and sanitation. In addition to increasing awareness, we also teach practical skills that will help the participants improve their situation. In several classes, we taught participants from several villages to make a sturdy toilet at a proper distance from their food and water sources. We then held a competition for the participants and judged who built the best toilet over the course of a month. At the end of the competition the winner is recognized, and all members of the group is encouraged to spread this knowledge to others.

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Deforestation is a critical issue in Nepal causing increased work and hardship in women's lives, breakdown of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, decreased agriculture production and thus food security, and weakening of community stability. We organize community discussion groups on this issue and the preservation of forests, promote regulations for sustainable forest use, and form women's committees to protect village forests. We have actively planted trees during the course of our programs, and many village groups have continued to re-plant bare slopes after our discussions.