Ongoing Projects

This project will work with married, out-of-school adolescent girls from the Province 2 – one of the poorest regions of Nepal with the highest rates of illiteracy, innumeracy, and early marriage. Through this project, PIN will improve their life chances by mitigating the harmful effects of early marriage. The project will address the underlying barrier that prevents girls from leading healthy, safe, and educated lives: their low social status. Implemented across entire local government units, this holistic project will involve diverse stakeholder: over the course of four years PIN will work with 7,000 out of school adolescent girls, 6,500 of their families’ members, 4,000 in-school girls and 4,000 in-school boys, 300 newly elected local government officials, and 280 religious leaders. The project consists of four intermediate outcomes that support learning, transition and sustainability:
- Married out-of-school adolescent girls’ improved attendance in literacy & numeracy courses
- Married out-of-school adolescent girls have acquired cognitive and non-cognitive skills to
develop and pursue life plans
- Schools have created enabling environments for students to learn and supportive of married,
out of school adolescent girls’ life plans
- Communities and authorities foster positive social norms that encourage delayed marriage and
realisation of married, out of school adolescent girls’ life plans
Within the first, the project will specifically improve girls’ learning outcomes by at least one grade equivalency in terms of literacy and numeracy skills. This will be achieved by developing tailored literacy and numeracy courses that will be delivered by trained trainers using gender responsive pedagogies and inclusive teaching methods. The literacy and numeracy courses will provide a minimum of 250 hours of teaching across 11 months and incorporate content designed according to the particular and unique health and safety needs of married girls.

The second intermediate outcome focusses on girls’ broader need for cognitive and non-cognitive life skills. This will be achieved through gender transformative programming with their peers, other married out-of-school adolescents, and through one-on-one life coaching sessions. Through these, the girls will develop the confidence and agency, and acquire information needed to make informed life decisions that will develop into life plans for their transition into formal and informal education and vocational programs.

The third intermediate outcome removes potential barriers towards married, out-of-school adolescent girls’ reenrollment in formal education programmes. This will be achieved by creating enabling and safe school environments through PIN’s existing work modality that empowers in- and out-of-school boys and girls to end bullying and create girl-led peer networks that support continued education and reenrollment of girls and boys. Work with adolescents will be complemented by Safe School Trainings that teach teachers how to use gender responsive pedagogies and non-violent disciplinary methods.

The SSDP is being implemented based on the lessons learned during previous education plans and programmes and to support Nepal’s achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. In this regards SSDP have also prioritized out of school children and girls and have allocated special interventions and resources. In addition, seeing the national figure these issues is still high and challenging in districts of Province 2. To meet the objective taken by SSDP, P2 and local government have too introduced several initiatives especially in the areas of Girls Education and Out of school children. Some of the flagship NFE program is ongoing in P2 along with Girls’ Access to Education (GATE) program funded by UNICEF to support out-of-school girls and help them build the foundational literacy, numeracy and life skills which they need to mainstream in schools. Improved use of data and evidence is providing important lessons that can heighten GATE’s effectiveness and provide insight to address the challenges marginalized girls face to continue their schooling. Such initiative is increasing its support to school retention strategies as mentioned in SSDP. GATE is a 9-month community-based non-formal education program. Further GATE graduates required to mainstream in formal education and retention is key challenges for which project will work with selected local governments, mother schools for rest of project duration to ensure regular attendance, learning continuity after mainstreaming. GATE will imparts basic functional literacy, numeracy and life skills to outof-school adolescent girls, with the aim of preparing them to mainstream into the formal school system. Considering the existing complexity of the OOS adolescents issue and process of mainstreaming them into formal education, ensuring their retention and completion of full cycle of basic education is still a big challenge. Radical and rigorous multi-stakeholder approaches are necessary to bring girls of age group 10-14 back to the mainstream education, ensuring their retention in school and continuation of full cycle of basic education. This would be possible through provision of additional and tailored non-formal education to strengthen basic literacy, numeracy, life skills and confidence of out of schools adolescent girls along with community engagement for retention that is only possible through integration of various sectorial interventions.

The program is in implementation in collaboration with Poverty Alleviation Fund in 10 VDCs to improve livelihood of poor, marginalized, back warded communities. It also ensures and fulfill rights of women and children by conducting health, education, community development related activities including Social analysis, Social Mobilization, COs group formation, Saving & Credit, Leadership training, Account keeping training, Income generating activities, Skill development training and infra structure activities.

In all VDCs many VDC level, ward level, settlement level orientation were conducted to identify the social backward people. Further social mapping were done as a result this organization has formed 101 Cos for income generating activities and two federate Cos and one single CO for infra sub-project. This project has covered 4000 HHs among which more than 90% are female and social backward. Through income generating activities they are getting facility of creating employment opportunity. Around 1 crore amounts are revolving as revolving fund among all Cos and community base sub-project are under construction of amount 1.5 crore. Through this program CO member have capacitate in their personal as well as social development.

SODCC Parsa have regularly volunteered in national level program such as Polio, Vitamin A, Women’s Day, Children Day, HIV/AIDS and Condom Day Celebration, Child Right Day Celebration, Mobilization of Volunteers in Vaccination programme, Disabled Day Celebration, Minimization of disease caused to tobacco, welcome to school program and others. SODCC Parsa have actively participated and supported to achieve these Government initiatives.

With the support of Restless Development, SODCC Parsa is implementing Sambhav Zero Tolerance Program in Parsa district in 50 community school in 13 local levels since 2016 and currently it is ongoing.
Program Goal

1. 1. Girls and boys, particularly from marginalized communities, are supported to transition into and remain in school, improve their learning, and become empowered members of their communities
2. 2. Schools are safe spaces free of all forms of gender based violence, where girls and boys are able to equitably learn, complete primary and secondary education, and become empowered members of their communities.

Major activities of the program is, Young Champion Mobilization, Child Club Mobilization, Suggestion Box Setup, Homework Group formation, Life Skill Sessions Delivery, Extra-curricular and awareness raising activities, learning camps, Life Skill Camps, Sport activities, Teachers Training, Child Club Training, Learning Exposure Visit, Community Dialogue.

The program is in implementation in collaboration with Poverty Alleviation Fund in 10 VDCs to improve livelihood of poor, marginalized, back warded communities. It also ensures and fulfill rights of women and children by conducting health, education, community development related activities including Social analysis, Social Mobilization, COs group formation, Saving & Credit, Leadership training, Account keeping training, Income generating activities, Skill development training and infra structure activities.

In all VDCs many VDC level, ward level, settlement level orientation were conducted to identify the social backward people. Further social mapping were done as a result this organization has formed 101 Cos for income generating activities and two federate Cos and one single CO for infra sub-project. This project has covered 4000 HHs amongwhich more than 90% are female and social backward. Through income generating activities they are getting facility of creating employment opportunity. Around 1 crore amounts are revolving as revolving fund among all Cos and community base sub-project are under construction of amount 1.5 crore. Through this program CO member have capacitate in their personal as well as social development

Girls’ Access to Education (GATE) started in 2011, in order to provide alternative education to 10-14 years old girls in rural areas. Due to existing social norms, lack of understanding on the importance of education, gender inequalities, and restriction of mobility, many girls have limited access to education in rural Nepal. The curriculum includes basic literacy, basic numeracy, as well as topics to empower girls such as reproductive health, protection measures, hygiene education, and prevention of HIV/AIDS, etc. GATE has demonstrated successes evidenced by 90% out of the school girls completed full cycle of 9 months’ NFE classes of whom 60% girls are enrolled in formal school. The programme and approach has strong potential in order to contribute for education of all strategy and contribute governments school sector development programme SSDP.

Total completed 90 GATE class from 2014 to 2017 in which 2250 adolescent girls were enrolled and 2025 girls were graduated in which 1584 girls mainstreamed to formal education.

Currently in 2017/18, SODCC Parsa is technically supporting 36 Local Level in implementation of 420 GATE classes in 4 districts of central terai in which altogether 10500 adolescents’ girls were enrolled and are learning in GATE class. Further, we have planned to mainstream them in to formal education.

The purpose of this program is to sensitize and mobilize communities in support of early grade reading and to support community awareness and outreach efforts. The program focused on improving the quality of early grade reading instruction and creating a culture of reading by involving parents as key role players in their children’s learning activities. By promoting after-school early grade reading activities at homes, communities and schools and providing additional opportunities and time to practice reading, it is expected to achieve enhanced family and community engagement in early grade reading activities, which will help improve the early grade reading skills of young learners. Family and community engagement is also targeted for the betterment of the School Management Committees (SMCs). Furthermore, Parent Teacher Association (PTAs) to promote learning and a child friendly classroom reading environment is also a major implementation of this grant to ultimately Increase family and community support for Early Grade Reading. In 360 community base schools SCM activities are implementing out which 115 schools have selected as SMC grant schools among which 96 schools have already receive their first installment of SMC Grant application. Also, till February month 99 EGR sub sub-committee formation orientation have completed and 135 their first and second quarterly meeting have completed. Also, 82 A/SIP orientation, 97 SMC Grant application orientation, 203 PR training activities have completed through which the qualitative progress are 37 SMC and 26 PTA have formed through regular coordination from this organization whereas 6127 parents have received PE message for quality education deliver to their early grade children.

The purpose of this program:
Objectives
Reading for All aims to improve reading outcomes for children with disabilities in grades 1–3 in USAID-supported Early Grade Reading Program (EGRP) districts. Ministry of Education, Science & Technology (MOEST) has launched Early Grade Reading Program in the School Sector Development Plan (SSDP) as a core component to improve foundational skills of children, prioritizing learning and reading skills of children in early grades. However, the EGRP interventions and teaching strategies do not cover learning needs of children with disabilities. Thus, to minimize this gap and complement to the already implemented Early Grade Reading Program, the USAID’s Reading for All (RFA) program has been introduced.

Overall objective:
Emphasizing capacity building across all activities and technical areas so that teaching and curriculum development personnel have the skills to improve and sustain long-term educational outcomes for Children with Disabilities (CwDs) in Nepal, the project will work in close collaboration with the MoEST, Center for Education and Human Resource Development’s (CEHRD) and its concerned divisions, Curriculum Development Centre (CDC), the Education Review Office (ERO), relevant local government representatives (Gaunpalika/Nagarpalika/education focal person), USAID, and relevant Disabled People’s Organizations (DPO) partners.

Specific Objectives:

• Improve data quality on children with disabilities;
• Enhance institutional and technical capacity at various levels to deliver quality reading instruction and support to children with disabilities and
• Test inclusive instructional models that can be scaled for specific groups of children with disabilities.