For the past six weeks, VIN has been conducting English and Nepali literacy classes under Education, Rights, and lifeskills project in the community of Devishtan, Kavresthali.
Every day at 1 PM and for one and a half hours, 6 participants gather to meet their two teachers, an international volunteer, Manon Guillin, and a local volunteer or intern at VIN, Merina Maharjan or Sugam Basnet more recently. The students, whose ages are ranging from 19 to the mid-50s, are all women. They are divided according to their level: two of them are part of the “basic level” group and focus on drawing and recognizing the English and Nepali letters and numbers, while the three more advanced students are learning how to introduce themselves in English or describe their daily life. Indeed, if some of them had never studied English before, some others have passed the SLC – the final examination in the Nepali secondary school – which implies that they master the most common sentence patterns in English.
They are really motivated and determined to learn. They show their homework – that they often have asked for – to the teachers at the beginning of each class and are sometimes found sitting together in the sun and practicing before the class starts. One of them, Namrata, 30 years old, is even coming to class with her 10-month-old baby who sometimes requires to be nursed in the middle of the lesson as she has no other option if she wants to attend the class.
VIN hopes that the Women’s Empowerment project will meet the women’s expectations and therefore ensures that it will be continued until at least mid-January in Devishtan!
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