OLE Nepal and WFP Partner to Bring Digital Learning to Remote School
Blogging from the Global OLE Assembly, Kathmandu, Nepal – OLE Nepal and the World Food Programme have a nascent partnership that combines missions for bringing education and bringing food to children in some of the world’s most remote schools. Richard Ragan, the World Food Programme’s country director for Nepal, spoke in enthusiastic terms about the partnership’s early days and future potential at the Global OLE Assembly.
“We use food as an entry point to do a range of development activities,” Ragan said, describing the WFP school meal program currently serving over 200,000 children in Nepal.
In addition, “because we move food, we have a very large logistical infrastructure,” Ragan said, adding that WFP can provide “a critical intervention point for OLE Nepal.”
Already, the two organizations have an ad hoc partnership to supply content and teaching guides to an isolated school in Nepal that was donated 15 laptops but had no ongoing support or learning activities.
Ragan also suggested that within a year, there is the potential for WFP to take what it is currently building with OLE Nepal and roll it out more widely in the country – and perhaps other parts of the world. “We should try to formalize it,” he said of the OLE partnership.
More generally, he told the Assembly that, “You are working on something that can revolutionize the way people around the world are educated. You are bringing something to isolated parts of the world that they would never have had without you. You are a game changer for them.”
About the Global OLE Assembly
The Open Learning Exchange (OLE), an emerging global network dedicated to educating the world’s children, is holding its first meeting of educational innovators from across the developing world in Kathmandu on November 2 to 7, hosted by OLE Nepal.
Among those attending have been Mahashram Sharma (Director General of Department of Education); Lawa Dev Awasthi (Joint Secretary of Nepal’s Ministry of Education); Haribol Khanal (Executive Director of Nepal’s Curriculum Development Center); Prativa Pandey (Chairperson of the Board of Directors of OLE Nepal and Chair of the opening session); Richard Rowe (Founder and CEO of OLE International) and members of his team; Kedar Bhakta Mathema (Former Vice Chancellor of Tribhuvan University and the Chief of the advisory board of OLE Nepal); Rabi Karmacharya (Executive Director of OLE Nepal) and members of his team; and representatives from OLE Centers and partners in Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Rwanda, and other countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America.
Watch a video about the partnership here or go to dotsub, where anyone can transcribe and translate this video to help spread the word.
