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The dZi Foundation (pronounced ‘zee’) was founded in 1997 with the vision of empowering local visionaries and communities to reach their true potential by implementing sustainable development programs. The organization follows a model of community-led development that emphasizes local control over project plans and outcomes in these extremely needy areas of eastern Nepal.  We are invited to work in our partner communities, and we commit to working together by providing financial, technical, and managerial support until we have achieved our shared goals. Community members lead the development of projects at every step, ensuring the sustainable use, maintenance, and continuation of completed projects after the support ends. Over the past two decades, the dZi Foundation has grown to become one of the most dynamic and well-respected organizations working in the Himalayas and has attracted international attention for our work. Here, among a plethora of success stories over the years, we share three stirring accounts of our work in our partner communities: In April 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic led to a nationwide lockdown in Nepal. The Delta variant was spreading throughout the country and communities acted quickly to protect the most vulnerable residents and limit transmission. For over four months, schools were closed.                While millions around the globe had adapted to continue their education virtually, dZi’s rural partner communities were dealing with a much more complicated reality. A lack of access to computers, the internet, and even a reliable cell phone signal made virtual classes unrealistic for students. But as local science teacher Binod Dahal witnessed, students were beginning to lose their academic progress and the educational disparities between urban and rural Nepal were growing even larger. Binod knew he needed to do something to support his students, and quickly. That’s when dZi introduced the Ideas Fund. Created by dZi’s Quality Education program, the Ideas Fund invites teachers in our partner communities to submit grant proposals for creative ways to engage students who have limited access to technology. Binod submitted his proposal, and soon after, heard that dZi had selected his proposal for funding! He had a vision of small groups of students safely gathering in their neighborhoods to study, share knowledge, and create the sense of community that felt so absent during the lockdown. Binod trained eight older secondary school students to conduct classes for younger primary school students.   In a time when traditional teaching methods couldn’t serve students’ needs, dZi knew that local teachers were best suited to find a solution. With dZi’s support and Binod Dahal’s creativity, we created a student-led teaching program that provided educational assistance and a sense of community to 120 students during Nepal’s Covid-19 lockdown. Making a long-term commitment to Khartamchha’s prosperity  “We are one of the most remote villages in the region,” says 41-year-old Gururaj Rai of Khartamchha.  Khartamchha is a new community that dZi will partner with this year. Nestled in the foothills of Eastern Nepal, Khartamchha grapples with a variety of challenges, from unsafe drinking water to the need for earthquake-safe schools.  Central to the dZi Foundation is our holistic approach—we are invited into every community we work in. From our first day, we team up with residents to ensure we provide what they need to grow their skills, capacity, and resilience. Gururaj looks forward to the support of dZi’s agriculture program. “Our farmers have been using traditional methods of farming,” he says. “We do not have much innovation in the kind of crops we grow.”   He says he welcomes a partnership with dZi so his community can build a brighter future by learning how to grow cash crops such as ginger, garlic, turmeric, and kiwis. And he envisions dZi’s impact throughout the community—from bolstering food security, to building new taps for safe drinking water, to constructing new earthquake-safe schools to improve education. In the recent election, Gururaj was elected the Vice President of the Kepilasgadhi Rural Municipality, the municipality where Khartamchha lies. As an elected official in the local government, Gururaj looks forward to building a strong partnership with dZi for Khartamchha’s prosperity.  Sometimes a bridge is more than a bridge.  Deep in the mountains in the district of Bhojpur is the village of Chyaksila. For years, the only way for children to get to school was to cross a fast, rushing Ghattekhola river. One of the grandfathers in the village would build a wooden bridge so the kids could cross safely, but it was washed away every year during the monsoon rains.  The grandfather would rebuild the bridge, again and again, only to have it torn apart by the river’s dangerous currents. The thing this grandfather wanted most was to send his grandchildren and their friends to school—was an ongoing source of fear. That’s where dZi came in. We listened to the community’s needs and worked together to build a permanent, safe bridge across the river, connecting an isolated neighborhood to the village’s school. All the people in Chyaksila are so grateful for this new bridge. That grandfather, and all the village’s 60 or so families, can now endure the monsoon a little easier, knowing their children are safer and have access to education.

Rinku Sada dropped out of school when she was 10 and never thought of going back again. Being a Musahar girl, she faced several barriers to learning, including discrimination from teachers, making her school experience far from positive. Now 12 years old, Rinku is back in a classroom and is a student in grade five, at a local school near her village in Bhokraha, Sunsari. This time, she is determined to continue and is hopeful about being the first in her family to complete schooling.  Rinku is one of 7,600 graduates of Street Child of Nepal’s ‘Marginalized No More’ program. Funded by UK Aid’s Girls Education Challenge, this programme worked with adolescent out-of-school Musahar girls in Mahottari, Dhanusha, Siraha, Saptari and Sunsari in Eastern Terai. Like Rinku, many of our students were first in their families to enroll into school, but were compelled to drop out. Reasons for this, as cited by them, were economic struggle, discriminatory practices against Dalits (especially girls) in school, learning challenges and safety concerns during their journeys to and from school, amongst others. Despite being in their teens, some had never been to school before. Half of the girls could not recognise a single letter in Nepali when they first joined our programme. Street Child of Nepal is an INGO that has been working in Nepal since 2015. Our purpose is to see all children safe, in school and learning—especially in low resource environments and emergencies. Following on from our emergency education response for Nepal in the aftermath of the earthquakes in 2015, we have worked with over 58,000 children in some of the most underrated and underserved communities in the country. Marginalized No More, our flagship programme which ran from 2019 to 2022, is a key milestone in our progress towards fulfilling our purpose. Musahars are recognised as one of the most marginalized ethnic groups in South Asia, because of their “low-caste” and “untouchable” status. As a result of generations of oppression and discrimination, the Musahars rank the lowest in nearly all socio-economic indicators on the Human Development Index (HDI), amongst all groups in Nepal. This marginalization impacts Musahar girls first and foremost, with a very low number being literate and many being out of school at an early age. With strictly limited life opportunities, these girls and their families opt for early marriages, wage labor, and often into bonded labor to support families in paying off large debts. Education is a lesser priority due to everyday hardships that the community endures. Street Child of Nepal’s team of researchers collaborated with Musahars, Musahar women in particular, to carry out an ethnographic study between 2016 and 2018, before launching Marginalized No More in 2019.   Foundational literacy and numeracy for out of school girls was one of the main ambitions of the programme. With partner AASAMAN Nepal, we delivered free, intensive learning using interactive, play-based pedagogy that was uniquely tailored for this group of girls. Students were assessed and assigned to an appropriate learning group with their peers for tutoring and support. Bespoke vernacular learning materials and resources were made accessible to assist their progress. The classes were run in familiar community spaces by locally hired and trained educators, many of whom were Musahars themselves. Often perceived as being “uneducable”, Musahar girls demonstrated a good pace of progress towards their learning goals within the first few months. These education sessions were complemented by separate life skills circles that enabled girls’ acquisition of knowledge on child rights, gender-based violence, local/regional support services, etc. As well as supporting girls back into education, the programme aimed to establish these girls are informed citizens and decision-makers. At the beginning of 2020, as the world grappled with Covid-19, Musahars and other disadvantaged groups like them were at the center of a fast-evolving humanitarian crisis. For Musahars in particular, their vulnerabilities were exacerbated and threatened their survival. Musahar girls bore much of the brunt of this impact. They were at an even greater risk of being subjected to domestic abuse, survival sex, transactional sex and dangers of exploitation, as households struggle to make ends meet due to excessive economic strains.  Strict movement restrictions meant that classes had to be stopped abruptly. However, despite the challenges, together with our excellent local partners AASAMAN Nepal, Janaki Women’s Awareness Society (JWAS) and Group of Helping Hands (SAHAS), we initiated weekly well-being checks through phone calls. This was a medium for girls to raise any urgent concerns. Psychosocial counseling and needs-based referrals were conducted based on these checks throughout the lockdown periods. As many families faced the risk of starvation during the strictest forms of lockdowns, we also liaised with Musahar organizations and assisted over 5,000 Musahar households with essential food packages as a priority.  Our education team eventually launched our distance teaching and learning programme in July 2020. This was designed to reach learners in the most remote and low-resource environments through the use of simple audio-assisted learning sessions. This method encouraged self-learning, with phone support from educators as needed. As the COVID-19 scenario evolved in the last two years, we continued to adapt our learning approach to ensure best outcomes for Musahar girls. As a result, following completion of the learning programme, girls have achieved notable learning gains – most girls are now able to read paragraphs and stories fluently, as well as perform basic mathematical operations. 3,100 of these girls are now back in schools while 4,500 girls have successfully set up their own small enterprises in their communities as part of our livelihoods support programme. Most importantly, the girls’ and community’s positive engagement and achievements have countered damaging assumptions that “Musahars cannot be educated”.  As the impact of the pandemic continues to intensify existing inequalities, and exaggerates inequities, the need to educate and protect the most vulnerable children remains more critical than ever. Street Child of Nepal remains committed in its efforts to enable children to be safe, in school and learning. 

Plastic pollution is one of the leading sources of environmental pollution, which poses a huge challenge in maintaining a more sustainable environment. Amidst the challenges, even the smallest efforts to refrain plastic from entering the landfill can be a huge help for the environment and the community. Although there are a lot of challenges in plastic issues the environmental impact of PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) bottles and its phenomenal capacity-to-weight makes it the best quality recyclable plastics with a low carbon footprint.​CREASION is a leading national organization working towards establishing a measurable, verifiable PET waste recycling mechanism in Nepal through its project, Recycler Saathi supported by The Coco-Cola Foundation. Since 2019, the project has collected more than 4,000 tons of used PET bottles (around 400 Trucks) for recycling from five provinces of Nepal and has directly worked with more than 4000 waste workers.   Nepal’s waste management infrastructure lacks the capacity to capture and recycle all the plastic waste we generate. We currently rely on local government and the private firms to manage our waste which has caused a gap to tap the additional waste collection that is being generated in the country. Ensuring that waste is correctly collected and managed, protects the environment from plastic pollution and ensures that recyclable materials make their way to the appropriate destination, where they can be progressed into new usable raw materials and products. Along with recycling, Recycler Saathi works in the formalization of the waste ecosystem in Nepal and the livelihood enhancement of the waste workers. By screening the needs of waste collectors and balers,  Recycler Saathi carefully plans and customizes various activities for them. As part of the intervention to ensure good health of our waste workers, Recycler Saathi has organized ten health camps, twenty occupational safety training sessions in the past years along with the distribution of the insurance to the waste workers. Further, to enhance the working efficiency of the balers, capacity building training for them has been organized frequently.One of the important parts is also the behavioral aspect for the waste management. Besides recycling of waste PET bottles, one of the major interventions of Recycler Saathi is advocacy and awareness as well. The drivers of change are children and youth to whom they have been providing awareness and practical sessions on recycling through various programs and activities.  Recycler Saathi has launched Waste Smart Clubs for the  students to receive exposure to and well-rounded knowledge about the waste management scenario. There are a total of 20 waste smart clubs in 20 government schools in Chitwan. In close collaboration with Recycler Saathi, Waste Smart Clubs are exposed to recycling practices as well as made aware about the need to recycle. They are taken for site visits and shown the process of baling, vertical gardening, organic farming and so on. Recycler Saathi has also developed training modules for the local governments for the training on waste management. Till now, the team has given training to 200+ local level elected representatives to date. With a strong value chain, stakeholders’ engagement and the diversion of plastics to the supply chain from landfills and water resources, Recycler Saathi aims to recycle the plastics in Nepal that will help attain the Net Zero Emission by 2045.

Every year, GWT builds two major school projects (16 to 18 classroom builds), over ten school extension projects (2 to 3 classroom builds), about half a dozen major school refurbishment projects and over seventy minor school refurbishment projects. Since 1989, GWT has completed 2,845 such projects across Nepal benefitting 224,522 students. Nearly 1,000 children attending Shree Saraswati Balkalyan Secondary School now face a brighter future. The secondary school, located in the Jhapa District of Nepal, has been completely rebuilt by GWT. Students can now learn in 24 new and improved classrooms, fitted with desks, benches, and bookshelves. As part of the building project, GWT constructed gender-separated toilet blocks and an incinerator. Our team also refurbished the school’s library and canteen and supplied new classroom furniture. Before construction was carried out, the walls of the school were aged and cracked following damage during the devastating earthquake of 2015. The rooms were small and overcrowded, with up to 56 students crammed into one classroom at a time. The roofs had given way and leaked during the monsoon, making it an unsafe environment for the children. Prem Kumar Rai was one of the first students who attended Shree Saraswati Balkalyan when it was founded in 1980. Now, he teaches at the school.  “When the school was first established, the population was very minimal around the area,” he said.  “Our classroom walls were sheets made of bamboo…there was no roof. Whenever we saw thick dark clouds in the sky, the school would have to close.” Although the school had made small improvements over the years, like installing CGI (corrugated iron) roofing, the infrastructure was worn down over time and by Nepal’s unpredictable weather. The new school buildings constructed by GWT will give hundreds of students a safe place to learn, where they won’t have to worry about leaking roofs, dilapidated desks, or cracked walls. “I cannot express how happy I am [with the school],” said Prem Kumar. “The new building will provide an excellent environment.” “These classrooms will motivate students to attend classes and study. This will help the overall development of students: social, mental, cultural, and educational development. This will help them achieve it.”