“I WANT TO CONTINUE MY STUDIES”: MANOJ’S STORY
Nepal
UWS Kanpur School
Despite a global focus on access to education, retention in school is a serious challenge. One-third of the world’s 70 million out-of-school children have attended school in the past, but were forced to drop out (UNESCO). From 2021 to 2024, we’re partnering with the Education Above All Foundation’s Educate A Child Programme to support more than 5,100 children in Cambodia and Nepal to stay in school and realise their full potential.
Manoj* is just one of these children, and this is his story.
To get to school, 9-year-old Manoj has to walk for roughly one hour each way through forests and mountain streams.
HIS WORLD
Manoj is 9 years old and lives in a remote village in eastern Nepal with his parents. His father is a daily wage earner and his mother tends to the family’s modest field and cattle.
To get to school, Manoj has to walk for roughly one hour each way through forests and mountain streams. This long walk to school is not just tiring, it’s also dangerous – particularly during times of heavy rain, when there are chances of flood and landslides. Due to work commitments, his parents can’t accompany him on this journey.
Managing time for his studies is also a struggle for Manoj. A large part of his time is spent helping his parents, and with school far away, he was struggling to attend school regularly. In fact, he was absent nearly 50% of the time.
HIS EDUCATION
From 2021 to 2024, we’re partnering with the Education Above All Foundation’s Educate A Child programme to support more than 5,100 children in Cambodia and Nepal to stay in school and realise their full potential. At each participating UWS school, we’ve established a School Retention Team which we’re training to identify and monitor the children at-risk of educational marginalisation and school dropout and to provide targeted support to these children.
Due to his low-school attendance and other factors, Manoj is just one of the students in a UWS school who have been identified as at-risk of dropping out through this programme.
Our Education Team developed an individual school retention plan to support Manoj, and conducted home visits to support his family in sending him to school regularly and catching up on the lessons he missed. The project’s various interventions to support children like Manoj under the Dropout Prevention Programme, including regular monitoring, provision of school supplies, and holding holiday & evening catch-up classes, motivated him to go to school every day.
“I am very happy with the improvement of Manoj in his studies and look forward to him achieving greater things in the future.”
Manoj’s father.
HIS FUTURE
Manoj is not alone in the challenges he faces. In Nepal, approximately 29% of students who enrol in Grade 1 drop out before they finish the primary cycle. Yet through partnerships, like that with Education Above All’s Educate A Child programme that have brought about initiatives such as the joint Dropout Prevention Programme, we have a chance to address this statistic.
We’re pleased to share that Manoj’s school attendance has significantly improved and he now attends nearly every day, is performing well in class and enjoys playing with his friends. Manoj and his family hope that his education will lead to a bright future.
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