Tsharka Tibetan Elem/Middle School, Dolpo, Nepal

Challenge

Nearly all the school-age children in Tsharka currently attend our local school. The school can accommodate up to 50 more children from nearby villages. Over the past several years, four new classrooms, a kitchen building, and a hostel have been built. The school campus has been transformed. Tsharka School has 3 classrooms for young students: pre-school, lower kindergarten, and upper kindergarten. There is one class of each grade from 1 through 10. This requires a total of 13 teachers.

Solution

Our challenge is to keep paying the salaries of our teachers, as well as to provide our students with basic stationery, textbooks, and other learning materials. We also pay to maintain our hostel in Kathmandu including rent, meals, tutors' salaries, students' school and college fees, and the salary of our hostel supervisor. We have built an impressive learning campus in Tsharka and created opportunities beyond the village for higher education. Now we must find the funds to maintain them.

Long-Term Impact

Today, virtually all the children in Tsharka attend our local school. Because they are being educated locally, they can absorb their Tibetan culture, language and religion. Children who began their education at Tsharka school in kindergarten are now finishing their tenth-grade education in Tsharka. Young adults who have been locally educated are staying in Tsharka to raise their own families. Students who finished their education in Kathmandu are returning home to contribute to their community.