OLE Nepal

This Center became formally established as a non-governmental organization in the spring of 2007. It now has a staff of over twenty people and several volunteers. Visit their website.

August 2009 -  After successfully launching the OLPC program in 26 schools in 6 districts with help from Department of Education (DoE), National Center for Education development (NCED – Ministry of Education’s teacher training body), and District Eduction Offices (DEO), OLE Nepal is now focusing its efforts to gather wider participation in the program. A total of 1963 children are currently benefiting from the program through 130 trained teachers. We also completed the baseline study at the 26 program schools and 39 control schools as part of the impact evaluation.

We have already started dialogues with the DoE, NCED and Curriculum Development Center (CDC) about plans for the coming year. The DoE took the lead in preparing the monitoring tool, and organized a four day workshop from July 27 – 30 to design and build the tools with active participation from OLE Nepal, NCED, and the DEOs from three districts. The field monitoring teams consisting of experts from DoE, NCED, and OLE Nepal will be visiting all 26 schools starting August 24, and submit reports by the third week of September. Amongst other things, the data collected from the monitoring visits will help us identify areas where teachers will need refresher training, which is planned for the second week of November. The DoE and OLE Nepal has also started working on an action plan for the next academic year. So far we have been very satisfied with the support and participation received from all government bodies.

On August 11, OLE Nepal organized an interaction program with the chief District Education Officers from all six pilot districts. The general feedback we received from them was that schools, communities and students are very enthusiastic about the program, and that the DEOs are committed to play their roles to further support the program in their districts. As the DEO from Kapilvastu said, the question before us now is not whether to expand this program or not, but rather how to expand it and make this kind of quality education accessible to more students and teachers. In addition to the DEOs, the workshop was attended by Director General, Director, and Deputy Director from the DoE, Executive Director from the CDC, Directors from three Regional Education Directorates.

One of the items we have on our list for this year is to garner more support from a wide range of stakeholders including the donor community. We are currently planning to take representatives from all the multilateral and bilateral donors in education sector to a field visit to one or two of our program schools. We hope that after they see the effectiveness of our program in rural schools, it will be much easier to convince them to participate in the project.

Background

OLE Nepal negotiated a formal Memorandum of Understanding with the Nepali Department of Education to conduct a pilot project in the spring of 2008. This involves a controlled study of the impact of using the XO laptop in a rural school setting. OLE has assisted OLE Nepal in applying for financial support from the Danish IT Society; DANIDA, the Danish program of foreign assistance; and the United Bank of Switzerland foundation.

OLE Nepal also received start-up financial support from OLE Board member John Cook and from OLE. The Danish IT Society, in an early indication of their commitment to OLE Nepal, ordered 200 XO laptops for delivery in time for the beginning of the Nepali school year in April 2008.

OLE Nepal has strong leadership and is proving to be a valuable learning ground for OLE as a whole, enabling it to adjust its strategy at an early stage of OLE’s development. OLE Nepal’s staff has largely worked as unpaid volunteers in the early stages of the Center’s work.

Board Members:

  • Dr. Pratibha Pandey, Chairperson — Directorof the CIWEC Medical Clinic in Kathmandu, former instructor at Harvard Medical School
  • Mohan Das Manandhar, Vice Chairperson — Director of the ACE Institute of Management, expert on organizational development
  • Anil Chitrakar, General Secretary — Leading environmentalist and clean energy advocate
  • Satish Krishna Kharel, Secretary — Attorney, leading expert on telecommunications and cyber-law
  • Siddhant Raj Pandey, Treasurer — CEO of ACE Development Bank
  • Jyoti Man Sherchan, Member — Career educator, Director of Malpi International School and actively
    involved in education projects for rural schools
  • Sudhindra Sharma, Member — Sociologist, Research Expert in Interdisciplinary Analysis

Leadership

  • Rabi Karmacharya — Executive Director
  • Dr. Saurav Dev Bhatta — Education Director
  • Rajeev Adhikari — Government Affairs
  • Upaya Sharma — Finance Manager
  • Mahabir Pun — Community Relations
  • Bryan Berry — External Relations

Partners

About Nepal

Nepal is a landlocked country located between China and India. Approximately 29 million Nepali inhabit Nepal and approximately 48.6% of those above the age of 15 are considered literate. The Nepali are primarily Hindu and have a diverse set of languages, the most common of which being Nepali, Maithali and Bhojpuri.

The country of Nepal is prone to severe flooding, drought and famine depending on the length of the monsoon season. Current concerns include deforestation, contaminated water and wildlife conservation.

Nepal has been a constitutional monarchy, but is in transition to a republic.

How you can help

All OLE Centres currently require a breadth of public and private sector partnerships. Participation among individuals and industries, government, and independent NGOs are all vital to the creation and sustainability of local OLE Centers, as well as the growth and success of their particular models for ensuring universal basic education by 2015.

The individuality of local circumstances, and the methods for addressing local learning systems also means that every OLE Centre offers unique investment possibilities.

How you can help with OLE Nepal:

  • Math and English language learning materials, particularly activities developed in Squeek, or other open educational resources that take advantage of the Suger operating system and applications (such as Tam-Tam) native to the XO laptop produced by One Laptop Per Child.
  • Participation in developing Nepal’s ICT infrastructure, particularly wifi stations extending out from OLE Nepal schools into surrounding areas.
  • Teacher development/education materials, expertise and on-the-ground teacher-training volunteers
  • OLE Consortium members are thankful for help with translation of learning resources from Nepali into English, Spanish, Mandarin, French and Arabic. If you can help translate, or contribute to the cost of translation, we will be very grateful.

For more information visit their website.