Nepal: Building schools
“It’s a rural area so really difficult to school construction materials. The Transportation, but worth it”
Santosh Bidari, MasterPeace Nepal club leader & Project Manager of re-building the school
For the Past Twelve Years, Santosh Bidari has been driven by his passion to bring together people regardless of faith or cultural background. Santosh chose to stay at his civil war-torn country to develop it instead of joining the wave of young people who preferred to immigrate to neighboring and Gulf Countries to work in jobs far from their passion or career path.
This once an agricultural country used to export herbs and tea leaves. Now it exports people. At least 2.2 million Nepalis — nearly 10 percent of the population — work abroad, according to the Nepal Institute of Development Studies. And that number doesn’t include Nepalis who leave to work illegally.
Santosh gathered a like-minded team of young people, and started his own foundation couple of years ago to mainly invest working in education, since he and his team is a big believer in the role of education, he calls it ‘Filling Empty Seats With Open Minds’
Santosh has set a goal for MasterPeace Nepal: That by 2020 MasterPeace Nepal will have reached out to all 60 districts of Nepal and created a network of 6000 Active Young Leaders and build 20 Schools in Rural Nepal.
Pursing his plan, Santosh and his team has yet another twist awaiting them, with April 25, 2015 a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, just northwest of the capital of Kathmandu. It was the worst quake to strike the region in more than 80 years.
The earthquake resulted into killing, 8600 people, injured double this number and displaces 2.8 million people, in addition to destroying thousands of tens of houses, schools, hospitals and monuments taking its toll on everyone.
Now Santosh ( with his home destroyed down the ground) faces another choice to make, should he give all up? Or roll his sleeves once again and re-built his country together with his team! Well.. in the coming lines, you will know Santosh’s decision!
The club began construction of the MasterPeace School in 2015, rebuilding schools that was affected by the earthquake, providing a fast shelter to thousands of students who lost their one of their most basic and essential rights.
“I believe that the school will support the Nepal Peace mission of MasterPeace. We believe that peace can only be institutionalized through development in the education system; therefore, this project is going to run a long time and be beneficial for the community as a whole.” Santosh said.
The school mission is to provide primary students (children under the age of 10) and teachers with better facilities and infrastructure, protected from rain, in a wind-free location, with sufficient water supply, and good hygienic facilities. Students will be provided with high quality software, laptops, English lessons, educational materials, and peace education.
The MasterPeace school will be a safe place for students to learn, which in the future could prevent them from leaving the village, becoming street children, and getting married at a young age. Santosh and the MasterPeace Nepal team are dedicated to the project and have worked tirelessly to build the school. “Our team used to walk for hours to visit the school at least once a week.”
With the help of the people in the village have responded well to the project, volunteering and helping construct the school, the first school was finished! Santosh and his team is asked almost everyday from different school principals, village leaders and government to help re-building schools, including this second one he is working on re-building which was destroyed beyond fix.
The new school in the area of Dhading, area heavily affected by the quake, will contain 5 classrooms, with the ambition to feed the kids nutritious meals together with a library as a part of the new construction. Also sanitary bathroom facilities for both genders will be provided as well as a small office for the principle and her staff!
The school will contain the right facilities for boys, girls and teachers, not only where it comes to hardware (rain, wind-free location, sufficient water supply, good hygienic facilities), but also good software (laptops, English lessons, education materials and most importantly peace education).
Education is the future!
