Location Tsagam and Bakhang villages, north Nepal
Type Education
Amount £1,800 annually
Background and project
Children in Tsagam and Bakhnag villages come from ethnic Tibetan families. This means their parents crossed the border from Tibet to Nepal before 1959 but they still have a very Tibetan culture and Tibetan is their main language.
Because Tsagam and Bakhang are inside Nepal, the schools there are run by the Nepali government. The teachers the government supplies are Nepali and do not speak Tibetan or practice Tibetan culture. Parents in the villages used to be worried about sending their children to these school in case because they had no teachers to teach them Tibetan and no way to learn about their own customs and culture – such as Tibetan dances, songs and religious festivals. They felt it was very important for the children to learn to read and write in their own language in order to preserve their Tibetan identity.
Because the villages are poor and people have to rely on subsistence farming to make a living the villagers could not afford to pay for the school to employ Tibetan teachers. This meant that the number of children going to school in both villages kept dropping and the children of the villages weren’t getting an education.
In 2009 we started giving an annual grant – thanks to Children’s Hope Foundation – to pay the salary of a Tibetan teacher for each of the two villages. Since then, attendance has risen steadily as parents no longer fear that sending their children to school will mean they lose their own language and customs. More and more children each year now complete their primary education, with many going on to study at high schools in Kathmandu.