This is an article about sustainable group growth, conservation schooling, the ability we every must make a distinction, and WWF Nepal.
For me, it’s about much more than that, too. I’m a former journalism professor, however I’m not even going to aim objectivity right here; that is advocacy. I need you to like this place and its individuals as a lot as I do.
After working with leaders and consultants in over 45 international locations, it’s the single most exceptional, inspiring place I’ve ever been and essentially the most dedicated, vibrant, exceptional group of individuals I’ve seen work collectively.
So I’m not shocked WWF Nepal has acknowledged Kopila Valley Faculty because the Greatest Eco Membership in a Secondary Faculty in Nepal; its dedication to sustainability and fostering environmental connections for college students is a sight to behold; I’ve seen it with my very own eyes.
I’ve additionally sat on the concrete ground at lunch time and eaten with the youngsters – tasty, nutritious meals they helped develop themselves and native Aunties ready utilizing a solar energy system that sits 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 heated to excessive temperatures, then transported down to pots within the kitchen. On a mean sunny day, the system can cook dinner rice, lentils and greens for 500 hungry individuals!
Lunch at Kopila Valley Faculty Picture shared by BlinkNow Basis
WWF Nepal’s Dedication to Conservation Schooling
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 stay in concord with nature.
That future relies upon upon Nepal’s youngsters.
So, WWF focuses a lot 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 growth now and sooner or later. (You probably have youngsters or grandkids with whom you’d prefer to share conservation tales, take a look at 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. Picture by Allison Shelley | Shared by BlinkNow Basis
From its inaugural faculty eco membership in 1994, WWF Nepal has sought to teach, interact, and empower 500,000 youth by conservation schooling. The eco membership program emphasizes studying by doing and works towards guaranteeing equitable entry to academic assets, selling social motion fashions, and growing a nationwide youth community to construct pro-environment and biodiversity values.
WWF Nepal goals to create a technology of Nepali youth dedicated to sustainable growth and biodiversity conservation that successfully engages and influences wider stakeholders.
That’s precisely what’s occurring at Kopila Valley. The youngsters will let you know about it themselves in English from the midway level (3:00) on this video shared on-line by WWF Nepal:
Hikmat Bhandari, employees 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 needed in Nepal.
“College students in Nepal must study conservation to determine a way of connection and accountability in the direction of the atmosphere and encourage them to develop into energetic contributors in conserving pure assets and the atmosphere for future generations. This additionally supplies useful experiences and abilities that are helpful to them in life – like analysis, public talking and policymaking.”
College students within the Sustainability Ambassadors Membership at Kopila Valley performed a key function 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 tasks to take collective and collaborative motion. College students from grades 6-12 have the choice to take part on this membership, which at the moment boasts 38 members and hosts numerous eco tasks 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 youngsters are usually not from well-connected households in Kathmandu or even in their personal group. The college is positioned 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 almost tripled within the final 40 years, placing huge stress on assets and the atmosphere.
The per capita earnings of Nepal in fiscal yr 2022–2023 was roughly $1,381; in Karnali province it was simply $964. The Nepali common multidimensional poverty price 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 most often would don’t have any entry or alternative to attend faculty. It’s a not-for-profit, non-public faculty providing free, world-class schooling (plus uniforms and meals) to over 425 needful college students from throughout the area.
Distinct from many faculties within the space, Kopila Valley presents the most effective schooling by an progressive 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 | Picture courtesy of BlinkNow
Between the Mountain and the Sky—Maggie’s Story
If this story sounds acquainted, you’ll have heard of co-founder Maggie Doyne when she gained the 2015 CNN Hero of the 12 months Award or was on the quilt of the New York Occasions 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 Residence the place she lived with co-founder Tope Malla and his household and round 40 youngsters. She was 22 years outdated 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, beloved to journey…I think many individuals meet Maggie and assume they might be nice buddies.
- There was one thing remarkably totally different about Maggie, although: at 22, she may rattle off any sustainable growth or early childhood growth statistic you’d ask her about, then join it to stakeholder issues on the bottom in her area of Nepal, in addition to describe the fact of the households the numbers represented.
Within the subsequent breath, she may let you know a very gnarly story about treating a home full of kids with lice…or even worms. Then, her giggle would utterly captivate the room.
Maggie Doyne is the true 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 little one is beloved, fed, educated and set as much as pay it ahead.
Maggie’s memoir, Between the Mountain and the Sky, was revealed in 2022 and is at the moment being made into a movie that can make its debut at Colorado’s Mountainfilm Competition in Telluride.
A Mannequin for Conservation Schooling
Within the early years, Maggie and the crew had been typically requested to fly around the globe to construct colleges and advise on youngsters’s properties in different communities. I keep in mind her saying as soon as, “Everybody says we’ve got to scale, scale, scale.”
They selected to scale one other means. Kopila Valley Faculty is open from 7 within the morning till 6 within the night and presents a various curriculum—math, science, Nepali, English, social research, computer systems and artwork—for nursery by twelfth grade. It feeds a whole lot of individuals day-after-day and supplies primary medical and dental care by its on-site clinic. Its Ladies’s Heart produces textiles, occupational coaching, and employment alternatives.
One of many causes Kopila Valley’s residence and college work so effectively is they’re totally entrenched within the specific wants and community, tradition, and group through which they function. It was a alternative to remain in Surkhet and serve to the most effective of their skill, to construct native groups and partnerships, primarily based on native must help transformation in the neighborhood.
The best way BlinkNow and Kopila Valley scale is as a mannequin for different properties, colleges, 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 can find no higher case examine.
And it’s a lesson for all of us that we every can have an effect on even the most important, 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 compounds influence.
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 truly work together with the meals system by planting and tending a number 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 give attention to the significance of the atmosphere, and choose employees 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 Heart has even began promoting rice luggage repurposed into reusable totes to attenuate the necessity for single-use plastic.
Kopila Valley Faculty WWF award-winning Eco Ambassador Membership | Picture 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 optimistic influence on the atmosphere.
Sustainability Ambassadors are consultants on all issues sustainability at Kopila Valley Faculty: rammed earth, solar energy, recycling, and extra. They offer excursions to guests, lead group clean-ups, plant timber, and encourage others to take motion for the planet.
Concerning the Sustainability Ambassadors, Maggie says,
“Our faculty’s sustainability program lays the groundwork for our kids’s thriving future. It fosters a deep appreciation for the atmosphere and the planet amongst our college students, equipping them with the data and talents essential to deal with future environmental challenges. We’re shaping leaders who will steer us towards a extra sustainable, equitable, and empathetic world.”
Conclusion
I’ve a sense if I requested Maggie to evaluate this text (I didn’t—she’s very busy), she may ask me to tweak the paragraph that shares the share of the inhabitants dwelling in poverty. She would seemingly level to the exceptional magnificence and biodiversity of the area, the unimaginable assets which are obtainable regionally, how extremely hardworking individuals are, how keen individuals are to work together…to the superb issues which are doable with assets.
Generally, once we assume and discuss locations around the globe like Surkhet, growth and conservation appear at odds, and the distinction a small group of individuals could make is proscribed. WWF and Kopila Valley Faculty acknowledge that conservation schooling can change that.
If I’ve realized something from assembly the crew at Kopila Valley Faculty and seeing them at work myself, it’s this: constructing the precise crew to final over time targeted on doing the most effective work doable could make unimaginable goals actuality.
For extra info:
If you need to see components of Nepal and the Himalayas for your self, Nat Hab’s Wild & Historical Himalaya: Nepal & Bhutan.
Take a digital tour of Nepal’s greenest faculty right here
The BlinkNow Basis began as a means to supply schooling and a loving, caring residence 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 Residence and Kopila Valley Faculty in Surkhet, Nepal.
