Terminology in this post: High school=9-10th grades; College=11-12; University=our college
8% of Nepali girls will graduate from 10th grade (which is graduating from high school). Of those, less than 1% will score high enough on the national high school graduation exam to qualify for scholarship for university.
In the history of the village where I lived, to the best of my knowledge, only two girls have ever qualified. This year, for the first time, four girls from the village I lived in earned the scores necessary to get scholarships to attend university (partly due to changes to how students are ranked due to covid, but hopefully the education system will see how their covid changes made the disparities in graduation rates between boys and girls shrink and continue with it).
The problem is that college (grades 11+12) is not free even at public schools like the one I taught, and there are generally no scholarships available.
Three of those girls come from families lower-income farms that can’t afford the $11-20/mo tuition at a college. We’ve spent several hours on the phone trying to figure out if there are other options for them, and there really aren’t any scholarships for college.
One wants to be a pharmacist. One wants to be a flight attendant (she wants to travel). The third aspires to be a teacher. And the fourth wants to study computer science.
I wanted to write this in part to share with you what has been bothering me greatly for the past weeks, and also to share about the grave inequalities faced world-wide. Other than starting a scholarship fund, I don’t have any solutions. I usually don’t for the problems they share with me, but this one in particular hit me, because they’re so close to getting scholarships for university. There are a ton of ethical issues with finances and work abroad, and that has also been overwhelming to think about. However, given that it is a well-identified issue in Nepal and that my school had asked me about fundraising for a scholarship in the past, there are some mitigating factors.
If you feel inclined to donate to a wonderful organization to help move that needle of inequality, I would recommend Women’s Foundation Nepal, which does the most incredible work (you can read about my adventures with them at Christmas and New Years here). Their president, Renu, is truly an unstoppable force for good, and someone I aspire to be like. I recognize that their donation process is different that what you may be accustomed to (they ask you to wire money), but it is a very legitimate organization that is making a huge difference.
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