For our first year of implementation, we are establishing 2 Keti Clubs, one rural, and one urban.
Dhaireni Village
In Dhaireni Village, we will be working with Shree Rastriya Primary School, which is a government school running from grades 1 to 5, managed by local community members. This school and the community have a developing relationship with our primary partner organization, Apeiron. The school is currently shifting to a new location with a larger building. This upcoming school year, 100 total students are expected to enroll. This is a year of growth and transition for the school, including greater involvement with Apeiron, and is therefore a good opportunity for us to implement the project. To encourage participation in the Keti Clubs, we will host “meet and greet” events at the school that are open to the community to allow girls’ families, and their mothers in particular, to get to know us, the volunteer mentors, and the program goals. In addition to the ‘meet and greets,” we will work to establish trust in the community through our connection with Apeiron, which has been working in the area for 10 years, and by developing relationships through translators with the girls’ mothers and teachers.
Shree Rastriya Primary School faces unique challenges in including both a long-standing village community in addition to a community of stonebreakers, which has recently moved to the village with the support of Apeiron. The stonebreakers are an extremely marginalized group traditionally consisting of Dalits, or untouchables.
Kathmandu
We are still working to establish official relationships with schools in Kathmandu. We are in contact with Shangri-La Public School, which runs from kindergarten through the end of primary school. We have a contact with the director of the agency House with Heart (formerly Ghar Sita Mutu), which is a home for abandoned children in Kathmandu, and have secured permission to work with the children living with that organization. We have contacts with two residential secondary schools working with Apeiron, our partner organization in Dhaireni Village. These private schools are Jeevan Tara Academy and Swapna Vatika School. Both of these schools are residential secondary schools, and although they are outside our target age range, we are hopeful that they will be helpful in identifying primary schools that feed into them. Finally, we have communication with Ama Ghar Children’s home, a second home for orphaned children where we may be able to pilot lessons.
Keti Club 