School Improvements

Batase School Classrooms

Jyam Bahadur Tamang was the first person in his whole village area to pass high school, 20 years ago. Today, he is a dedicated and tireless educator. As the Principal of Batase’s village school, he oversees 185 children in 8 grades and teaches Nepali language. Because his wife lives hours away taking care of her ailing father, Jyam Bahadur also cares for his 3 children and his farm when he’s not at school. Highly respected for his dedication and his honestly, Jyam Bahadur rallied community support to build classrooms for Grades 6-8 so they could add those classes. Why? Because children had to walk 2 hours each way in order to attend Grades 6-8 in a nearby village.

Batase is a Tamang village in the rural Himalayas about 4 hours north of Kathmandu. Tamang people are a Buddhist ethnic minority and are typically hard-working with strong community bonds. Indeed, when we visited the village, we found that they had already collected substantial money and materials from within the community and begun classroom construction, but they came up short of cash. With partially finished buildings they had constructed using their own resources, we decided to provide funds to finish the doors, windows, and benches and to repair the school’s drinking water supply.

Batase School now goes through Class 8, and the construction was well-managed. Jyam Bahadur would like to add a fully funded teacher (~$1500 annually) plus some computers to his school. Currently the school splits 6 salaries across 9 teachers and has no computers–an offering that would attract and excite students.

Visiting the Batase Community

Partially constructed new classrooms needing doors and windows