This is a narrative about sustainable group improvement, conservation schooling and the ability we every must make a distinction.
For me, it’s about much more than that, too. I’m a former journalism professor, however I’m not even going to try objectivity right here; that is advocacy, pure and easy. I need you to like this place and its individuals as a lot as I do.
Welcome to Kopila Valley Faculty
After working with leaders and specialists in over 45 international locations, Nepal’s Kopila Valley Faculty is the single most outstanding, inspiring place I’ve ever been and probably the most dedicated, vibrant, outstanding group of individuals I’ve seen work collectively.
So, I’m not stunned WWF Nepal has acknowledged Kopila Valley Faculty because the Finest Eco Membership in a Secondary Faculty in Nepal. Its dedication to sustainability and fostering environmental connections for college students is a sight to behold—and one I’ve seen with my very own eyes.
I’ve additionally sat on the concrete ground at lunchtime and eaten with the youngsters—tasty, nutritious meals they helped develop themselves and native Aunties ready utilizing a solar energy system on the cafeteria roof.
The photo voltaic cooking system consists of three rows of curved mirrors that focus daylight on an insulated pipe containing oil that’s heated to excessive temperatures after which transported down to pots within the kitchen. On a median sunny day, the system can cook dinner rice, lentils and greens for 500 hungry individuals!
Lunch at Kopila Valley Faculty Photograph shared by BlinkNow Basis
WWF Nepal’s Dedication to Conservation Training
Over the course of its 30 years, WWF Nepal has maintained a twin mission: to cease the degradation of the pure atmosphere and construct a future through which individuals dwell in concord with nature.
That future relies upon upon Nepal’s youngsters.
So, WWF focuses the vast majority of its efforts on conservation schooling. Conservation schooling is designed to instill a way of worth and stewardship in younger individuals throughout the nation so they take motion towards conservation and sustainable improvement now and sooner or later.
(When you have children or grandkids with whom you’d prefer to share conservation tales, try WWF Nepal movies and books in English on the backside of the web page linked right here.)
Kopila Valley Faculty in Surkhet, Nepal, September 17, 2022. Photograph by Allison Shelley | Shared by BlinkNow Basis
From its inaugural faculty eco membership in 1994, WWF Nepal has sought to coach, interact and empower 500,000 youth by way of conservation schooling. The eco membership program emphasizes studying by doing and works towards making certain equitable entry to academic assets, selling social motion fashions, and creating a nationwide youth community to construct pro-environment and biodiversity values.
WWF Nepal goals to create a technology of Nepali youth dedicated to sustainable improvement and biodiversity conservation that successfully engages and influences wider stakeholders.
That’s precisely what’s taking place at Kopila Valley. The youngsters will inform you about it themselves in English from the midway level (3:00) on this video shared on-line by WWF Nepal:
Hikmat Bhandari, workers mentor for the Ambassador Membership’s waste administration group, says this video contributed to the hands-on studying expertise that’s prevalent at Kopila Valley and obligatory in Nepal.
“College students in Nepal have to find out about conservation to ascertain a way of connection and duty towards the atmosphere and encourage them to turn out to be energetic members in conserving pure assets and the atmosphere for future generations. This additionally offers invaluable experiences and expertise that are useful to them in life, like analysis, public talking and policymaking.”
College students within the Sustainability Ambassadors Membership at Kopila Valley performed a key position in securing this award and created a video submission highlighting their work in 4 teams: forest hearth, plantation or cultivation and care, waste administration, and local weather change.
Every group research an environmental problem after which plans initiatives to take collective and collaborative motion. College students from grades 6–12 have the choice to take part on this membership, which at present boasts 38 members and hosts varied eco initiatives and group service efforts in the course of the yr.
In keeping with WWF Nepal, “This honor is awarded to academic establishments which have demonstrated distinctive dedication and ingenuity in advancing environmental sustainability.”
Kopila Valley—Nepal’s Greenest Faculty
What makes this award at this faculty particularly distinctive is that these children should not from well-connected households in Kathmandu or even in their personal group. The varsity is situated in Birendranagar, Surkhet district, in Nepal’s largest province, Karnali, 375 miles west of Kathmandu.
Each Nepal’s longest river and its two largest lakes are in Karnali, as are two nationwide parks, Rara and Shey Phoksundo. However Surkhet’s inhabitants has practically tripled within the final 40 years, placing huge strain on assets and the atmosphere.
Nepal’s per capita revenue in fiscal yr 2022–2023 was roughly $1,381; in Karnali Province, it was simply $964. The Nepali common multidimensional poverty charge is 17.4%; in Karnali Province, it’s 39.5%.
Since its inception, Kopila Valley Faculty has undertaken rigorous admission processes to make sure that they’re figuring out and accepting youngsters who normally would haven’t any entry or alternative to attend faculty. It’s a not-for-profit, personal faculty providing free, world-class schooling (plus uniforms and meals) to over 425 college students from throughout the area.
Distinct from many colleges within the space, Kopila Valley provides the most effective schooling by way of an revolutionary place-based energetic studying program, a modern, sustainable faculty campus, and complete, ongoing coaching of native academics and leaders.
Kopila Valley Faculty in Birendranagar, Surkhet, Nepal | Photograph courtesy of BlinkNow
Between the Mountain and the Sky: Maggie’s Story
If this story sounds acquainted, you will have heard of co-founder Maggie Doyne when she gained the 2015 CNN Hero of the 12 months Award or was on the duvet of the New York Instances journal in 2010.
BlinkNow Co-founder & CEO, Maggie Doyne | Shared by BlinkNow Basis
I met Maggie in 2009 when she dreamed of opening an easier, bamboo-construction faculty close to the Kids’s House the place she lived with co-founder Tope Malla and his household and round 40 youngsters. She was 22 years previous and had already lived in Nepal for a number of years.
Two issues struck me:
- She was a lot like me: We each grew up in middle-class, suburban American households, excelled at college and sports activities, liked to journey…I think many individuals meet Maggie and suppose they may very well be nice associates.
- There was one thing remarkably completely different about Maggie, although: At 22, she may rattle off any sustainable improvement or early childhood improvement statistic you’d ask her about, then join it to stakeholder considerations on the bottom in her area of Nepal and describe the truth of the households the numbers represented.
Within the subsequent breath, she would possibly inform you a very gnarly story about treating a home full of youngsters with lice…or even worms. Then, her snort would fully captivate the room.
Maggie Doyne is the actual deal, as are co-founder Tope Malla and the groups on the bottom in Nepal and the USA. They’re constructing and dwelling an enormous, evolving imaginative and prescient of a world the place each youngster is liked, fed, educated and set as much as pay it ahead.
Maggie’s memoir, Between the Mountain and the Sky, was printed in 2022 and is at present being made into a movie that may make its debut at Colorado’s Mountainfilm Competition in Telluride.
A Mannequin for Conservation Training
Within the early years, Maggie and the staff had been usually requested to fly all over the world to construct faculties and advise on youngsters’s properties in different communities. I bear in mind her saying as soon as, “Everybody says we have now to scale, scale, scale.”
They selected to scale one other method. Kopila Valley Faculty is open from 7 within the morning till 6 within the night and provides a various curriculum—math, science, Nepali, English, social research, computer systems and artwork—for nursery by way of twelfth grade. It feeds a whole lot of individuals day-after-day and offers primary medical and dental care by way of its on-site clinic. Its Ladies’s Middle produces textiles, occupational coaching, and employment alternatives.
One of many causes Kopila Valley’s house and faculty work so properly is they’re completely entrenched within the explicit wants and community, tradition, and group through which they function. It was a selection to remain in Surkhet and serve to the most effective of their capacity, to construct native groups and partnerships, based mostly on native must help transformation locally.
The way in which BlinkNow and Kopila Valley scale is as a mannequin for different properties, faculties, and foundations that need to develop and serve in regionally accountable methods. Wish to learn to construct a motion or rework a problem or space? You’ll find no higher case examine.
It’s a lesson for all of us that we are able to every have an effect on even the biggest, most overwhelming, seemingly intractable points.
For me, this relates on to conservation and local weather change mitigation. Each effort, each motion, is of worth, and nice management plus dedicated groups compound impression.
That precept is mirrored all through the varsity’s curriculum. College students at Kopila Valley don’t simply find out how the varsity management protects the atmosphere—they really work together with the meals system by planting and tending a few of the rice and different meals the group consumes every year. Youngsters even go to the landfill and municipal waste administration groups.
Every individual performs his or her half, too: throughout the annual Earth Day week-long celebration, academics concentrate on the significance of the atmosphere, and choose workers members take part in permaculture coaching to be taught extra about Surkhet’s ecosystem. A cooperative that grew out of Kopila Valley’s vocational Ladies’s Middle has even began promoting rice baggage repurposed into reusable totes to reduce the necessity for single-use plastic.
Kopila Valley Faculty WWF award-winning Eco Ambassador Membership | Photograph by Robic Upadhayay courtesy of BlinkNow
This latest recognition from WWF Nepal serves as a testomony to Kopila Valley Faculty’s unwavering dedication to environmental conservation. The Ambassadors Membership and the varsity itself proceed to encourage and equip college students, in addition to the encompassing group, to make a constructive impression on the atmosphere.
Sustainability Ambassadors are specialists on all issues sustainability at Kopila Valley Faculty: rammed earth, solar energy, recycling, and extra. They provide excursions to guests, lead group clean-ups, plant timber, and encourage others to take motion for the planet.
In regards to the Sustainability Ambassadors, Maggie says,
“Our faculty’s sustainability program lays the groundwork for our youngsters’s thriving future. It fosters a deep appreciation for the atmosphere and the planet amongst our college students, equipping them with the information and skills essential to sort out future environmental challenges. We’re shaping leaders who will steer us towards a extra sustainable, equitable, and empathetic world.”
Conclusion
I’ve a sense that if I requested Maggie to assessment this text (I didn’t—she’s very busy), she would possibly ask me to tweak the paragraph that shares the proportion of the inhabitants dwelling in poverty. She would seemingly level to the outstanding magnificence and biodiversity of the area, the unbelievable assets which are accessible regionally, how extremely hardworking persons are, how keen persons are to work together…to the superb issues which are attainable with assets.
Generally, once we suppose and speak about locations all over the world like Surkhet, improvement and conservation appear at odds, and the distinction a small group of individuals could make feels restricted. WWF and Kopila Valley Faculty acknowledge that conservation schooling can change that.
If I’ve discovered something from assembly the staff at Kopila Valley Faculty and seeing them at work myself, it’s this: constructing the correct staff to final over time, targeted on doing the most effective work attainable, could make unbelievable desires a actuality.
For extra info:
If you want to see components of Nepal and the Himalayas for your self, think about Nat Hab’s Wild & Historic Himalaya: Nepal & Bhutan.
Take a digital tour of Nepal’s greenest faculty right here
The BlinkNow Basis began as a method to supply schooling and a loving, caring house for impoverished and at-risk youngsters with out properties. It fulfills its mission by offering monetary help and administration oversight to the Kopila Valley Kids’s House and Kopila Valley Faculty in Surkhet, Nepal.
