Keep Girls in School Programme in Nepal

Making education more accessible and inclusive across 11 schools in Gulmi, Nepal through solar-powered water pumps.

FACTS

Location

Gulmi, Nepal

Impact

Solar-powered water pumps improving water access and hygiene facilities in 9 schools.

Organisation

Renewable World

Track My Electricity is supporting Renewable World, a NGO tackling poverty using renewable energy, to implement a project in Nepal using solar-powered water pumps to give access to potable water in 9 schools in the Gulmi District – improving school access and inclusivity to more than 3,300 children. Additionally, the project aims to upgrade the school sanitisation and hygiene facilities with designed accesses for children with disabilities, ensuring users privacy and dignity. The project also aims to increase children hygiene knowledge and practices leading to health improvements in the communities.

The renewable project will benefit two municipalities in Gumli, Nepal, a district that only has a 65% access to the national grid (NEA, 2013) and where children are at high risk of abandoning school. This remote region is located high above water sources, causing lack of potable water access and inadequate sanitation and hygiene facilities for the communities. Poor water access and hygiene facilities impact school attendances for children in Gumli by forcing them to carry heavy drinking water to school for up to 1,5 hours a day. Unreliable water access cause poor hygiene at schools, such as toilets falling into disrepair and inability for children to pursue decent hygiene practices – increasing diseases among children. Typhoid, Amoebic Dysentery and Cholera are endemic in the Gumli district, inhibiting child growth and educational attainment. Low level of school attendance caused by poor water access has dramatic consequence in children possibilities to escape from poverty.

Track My Electricity is helping implement solar-powered water pumps in Gulmi, Nepal that would increase school attendance for girls and disable students, school retention and health improvements for all – improving children access to education and supporting their future.

Funding progress

100%

Helping girls to stay in school

At Ishwori Secondary School, 209 girls have to share one unreliable toilet, causing low school attendance every month.

The breathtaking view of Ishwori Secondary School sitting above the clouds in Gulmi hides a crucial problems for the girls attendants. The nearest water source is at the bottom of the hill, causing inadequate water and sanitation facilities at the school – leading to a shocking girls absenteism rate of 25% compared to 8% for boys. Poor hygiene facilities at Ishwori school induce girls to miss up to four school days a month during menstruation, making up to a full year of secondary schooling being missed.

The solar-powered water pumps project would facilitate girls to stay in school by improving water supply up to Ishwori Secondary School, making their hygiene facilities running with clean water. By upgrading the sanitization infrastructures, such as improving toilets privacy and cleaneness, girls will not be forced to miss school days when having menstruation.

I want the water and good toilets not just for me, but also for my younger sister. That would make me very happy. – Deepa Khatri, girl student at Ishwori Secondary School

Project details

A 3 years timeline project targeting 9 schools in Gulmi district in Nepal, a mountainous region 400 km from the capital city where children are highly at risk of dropping out of school due to lack of water and poor school hygiene facilities. Track My Energy is helping to build capacities for schools to harness solar energy to pump water from their water source up to the schools, where it will be filtered and distributed to new or renovated taps and toilets.

Solar-powered water provision, combined with sanitation and hygiene facilities, resources and knowledge, resulting in

Increased school attendance especially by girls and children with disabilities
Increased school retention and improved attainment in end of grade results
Improved sanitation and hygiene practices leading to improved health

About Renewable World

Renewable World was established in 2007 with the aim of empowering energy poor communities to develop sustainable livelihoods trough the provision of renewable energy systems. They work through partners to provide renewable energy services to the energy poor where financial or geographical barriers prevent public or private sector solutions being effective.

In Nepal, their projects use renewable energy technology to tackle poverty by bridging the major barriers facing communities, with a focus on geographically and socially marginalised, energy-poor communities in the Western mid-hills and Terai region of Nepal. Renewable World’s work in Nepal has reached over 90,000 people, bringing a wide range of benefits: reducing the amount of time women and girls spend collecting water and reducing illness/accident associated with water collection; increasing income from agriculture; and increasing household consumption of fresh vegetables and food security.