School Bells Are Ringing in Pasachaur

School is in session at Kalika Primary School. This is a remarkable thing in Pasachaur, Nepal.  This tiny village has undergone a transformation. “The villagers will no more [be] shy to take its name proudly,” says 75 year-old Birkha Singh Gurung.

Pasachaur is a small, isolated village in the western region of Nepal. Nepal is divided into districts. Although Pasachaur is not far from the Lamjung District headquarters, it doesn’t have formal roads for travel, and it is cut off from neighboring villages by the Marsyandi river.

The villagers are typically poor and uneducated. The land in Pasachaur is not good for farming, so most of the villagers walk to neighboring communities for work. They subsist from day to day as manual laborers. Poverty has contributed to malnutrition and poor hygiene.

In past years, the villagers have seemed unmotivated by the prospect of change. Some attempts were made to reach out to non-government humanitarian organizations, but many of these groups feared the community’s apathy. In actuality, the village had been offered a sum of money for school construction in the past. But they had not known how to use it, and so they had turned it down.

Bishnu Adhikari, In-Country Manager for CHOICE Humanitarian, manages CHOICE and Trivani’s joint projects. As a civil engineer and a humanitarian, he was uniquely qualified to help Pasachaur take the next step in their development. “You must have an action plan and put the infrastructure into place to make a permanent difference in a village, in a country,” he said.

With a plan in place the villagers were eager to get started. They proved their dedication by donating their time and labor, and they even took over most of the management of the project. The old school had to be dismantled and the site had to be cleared of all rocks, sand, and non-local material. CHOICE/Trivani’s technicians estimated it would take a month to do. The villagers did it in a week!

It took only 3 months to complete the construction of the new school building. School enrollment doubled! It was evident that they would need another school teacher. In the past, the village might have asked for aid, but with new confidence, the village families sacrificed and saved and raised the money all by themselves.

A bridge now spans the Marsyandi river and enables older students to attend secondary school in a nearby community. The villagers understand and appreciate the value of education. They eagerly anticipate their children gaining a higher education and using those skills to eliminate poverty and move the whole village forward along the path of progress.

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