active· Education

Mother Tongue Based Basic Education Program into Lhomi language

This project seeks to improve Lhomi children?s right to quality learning, increase efficiency of learning, and develop their cognitive skills to attain desired learning outcomes. Some 700 Lhomi children and their parents will directly benefit within the project period. About 6000 Lhomi people who speak Lhomi as their first language live in the Himalayas in Nepal. There is total of 14 public schools in which there are in total about 150 pupils per grade level. When starting school, these children have little or no knowledge of the Nepali language which is used as the language of tuition. Children in Nepal have the right to free education in their own language. For Lhomi children, this right is not currently materialized. Partially because of the language barrier, children are not achieving the desired learning outcomes. This also contributes to high dropouts. The previous phase of this project focused on improving the quality of education in the pre-primary level. A large proportion of the children involved have attained basic literacy. In order to achieve minimum proficiency levels in reading and math, there is a need for further development of Lhomi education. This project is seeking to improve the rest of the primary school from grade 2 to 5. The main objective of this intervention is to improve learning outcomes in public schools. Quality mother tongue-based learning materials will be produced, and all teachers will be trained. It is important that the local key stakeholders become actively engaged. Therefore, parents, teachers, school management committees and education authorities will be trained to become aware of their responsibilities and motivated to improve children?s learning. In each school there will be awareness raising meetings for parents. In these community events, parents - mainly mothers - and teachers will discuss education and other children's wellbeing issues. Wycliffe Raamatunkääntäjät (WRK) partners with Nepal Lhomi Society (NELHOS) who is responsible for implementation. No Finnish personnel are involved in the operational implementation of the project. WRK and NELHOS have 10 years of shared experience on similar projects.