30 Mar 21
Freedom to Learn (FtL) works to provide the opportunity of education to children in some of the remotest regions of Himalayas and South Asia. They are making a difference year upon year with not only the number of children attending school but also the academic results and the impact it is having on the local community.
Everybody deserves the opportunity to an education. This is something tranScrip is incredibly passionate about and why we have supported FtL since tranScrip’s inception in 2008. Since that time, tranScrip has attended several fundraising events and supported FtL throughout their journey.
FtL have recently announced that as a result of the encouragement and support they have received from everyone, including tranScrip, they are able to embark on a large-scale project working with all 34 schools in Panauti, a municipality of Nepal. The project will directly serve over 4,780 students across the rural hilly region.
Joey Owen, the co-founder of FTL, described this project as having three key aims – ‘Consistency, Impact and Sustainability’.
This multi-faceted project is designed to maximise results and create long-term benefits to ensure the schools become thriving hearts of the communities they serve, as well as working with the Ministry of Education municipality department maximizing policy to establish greater self-sufficiency.
Teacher training
Training of 8 teacher trainers, which started at the beginning of March, will go on to work with over 455 teachers across the municipality – improving the quality of the teaching learning process to ensure consistency and sustainability is maintained.
Training 186 School Governors in Responsible Planning and Management, Leadership Skills, Staff Support and Motivation, Child Protection and Safeguarding, Resource Management and Finance and Budgeting; this work will increase the quality of strategic planning (looking into the long term), effective school management, accountability, strengthening community and overall school performance.
This is all about ensuring that each student leaves school with certain tools and skills to excel in their self-belief, confidence, communication skills, leadership ability and problem-solving skills. Using carefully designed drama, music and art programming as well as working with a therapeutic team to support some of the children who are most vulnerable, students will leave school more mentally and confidently prepared for their adult life.
Working closely with the local authorities, at district and municipality level, the local FtL team are working as consultants on the formation of the Panauti education policy going into 2022. They will be drawing on FtL’s data and research to inform decision making at policy level. This may look like a fresh look at allocating budgets towards more quality teacher training, providing effective learning resources equally across the rural schools, or the provision of hot school meals, providing good nutrition for children in a safe environment whilst supporting their families who often do not manage to provide more than a meal a day.
To find out more about Freedom to Learn, follow on them on this journey and learn how you can offer support, please visit http://www.freedomtolearn.org.uk/.
You can also follow FtL on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
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