Strengthening Public Schools through Partnerships (STEPS)

We are seeking to increase access to education and thereby reduce poverty. While our Kopila Valley School has impacted the lives of over 600 children since opening, we are limited by the capacity of our school and staff, so we are innovating ways to expand the impact of our holistic education model.

Over 600 million people live in poverty across the globe, and poverty is a significant barrier to education in Nepal as well as other regions. Kopila Valley School is based in Nepal’s most resource-limited province, where 58% of children under 5 face malnutrition and the poverty rate is over 35%. Nepalis are also disproportionately subject to climate change disasters in the form of monsoons, floods, landslides, fire, and earthquakes. Altogether, only 56% of students are enrolled in secondary education and only 26% of adults in Nepal have completed 10th grade. 

Many children in Surkhet are forced to work or sort through trash in order to feed themselves, and some are without homes and families to support them. When parents are present, they often have difficulty providing food, school fees, and medical care due to a lack of job opportunities and low skills. Children cannot learn without having their basic needs met, so inside our educational model, we provide access to healthy foods, proper nutrition, and basic medical care. 

Due to a 10-year civil war and various natural disasters, many Nepalis have been unable to access education, and many schools struggle to meet the needs of every resident. 

There are also many children who do not have homes or are in unsafe situations. It is estimated that one million children In Nepal have been orphaned. Along with education, we seek the safety of every child we work with. We do all we can to keep families together, but for these children who have no homes or families, we provide both a home and a family in the Kopila Valley Children’s Home.

We provide free, high-quality education to 400+ of the most disadvantaged children in the Karnali Region of Nepal, many of whom would be unable to attend school otherwise. Distinct from many schools in the area, Kopila Valley School offers the best education through an innovative place-based active learning program, a health and wellness program including free healthy school lunches, a leading-edge, sustainable green campus, comprehensive and ongoing training of local teachers, and collaboration with families and the community. When they are provided opportunities to learn and grow, our students are far exceeding the average statistics. The graduation rate of Kopila Valley students is 85%, a stark contrast to the national average of 26%.

Our sustainably-built campus is a teaching tool; we use place-based learning and an environmental studies curriculum with outdoor agriculture projects such as gardening, composting, and permaculture training. Students and teachers take collective action to reduce waste, conserve energy, and reuse materials. Our other programs join in these efforts, and students are sharing sustainable living practices with their families and community.

Kopila Valley further demonstrates sustainability as a means of civic action by prioritizing its procurement purchases from local small businesses and farmers, and the school campus is used as a teaching center for farmers to learn organic practices.

Spreading to More Communities

Because the success of our education programs has been measurable and impactful, we believe we can impact even more people. Our long-term goal is to build partnerships within the community and around the world that would allow other schools to replicate our educational model.

Our solution is the Strengthening Public Schools through Partnerships (STEPS) program -- to provide technical support, guidance, and training for local public schools. This increases our impact and the quality of education for more students and families in our province. 

We build partnerships with schools that are need-based, built for maximum impact, and amplify our values of gender equity, economic independence, and sustainability. We provide technical support, guidance, and training. In order to work with us, schools must have a need for improvement and leaders who are eager to partner with us. We see a need in local schools for partnership in curriculum development, safety and infrastructure, teaching-learning, and management.

Based on our initial assessment, our innovative inputs will be focused on improving the public school management system in our municipality, strengthening of human discourse through deployment and training for the teachers and other personnel at the schools, upgrading school infrastructure, and enhancing curriculum and teaching-learning activities.

Our expected outcomes are increased school enrollment in the public schools, retention, and also enhancement of the capacity of public schools, resulting in the improved healthy lives of children and improved learning outcomes.

Spreading to the World

By partnering with public schools in our community first, we capitalize on the relationships built within the local municipality and perfect the partnership framework. In the future, this partnership model can deploy on a larger scale, allowing us to reach rural communities through their schools around the country of Nepal, and beyond.

We are providing high-quality education to children who would not otherwise be able to attend school due to prohibitive fees, and we are challenging standard assumptions about the quality of services that impoverished people deserve. We are also beginning to consult with other local schools to provide this same quality of education for more students.

There are a number of barriers to education in the community, and we are working to effectively reduce those for the future good of the students and their families. Poverty keeps many children from attending school, as mentioned previously. Our Family Development Program is a means of assisting families who are struggling to gain and maintain stability in life.

In addition, gender norms have prevented educational opportunities for girls in the community. Because these are deeply rooted, girls from low-income families are often locked out of education while limited resources are directed toward boys. In some families, even boys are sent to work instead of to school.

Through community outreach, we work to identify and enroll students that would otherwise be denied an opportunity to attend school. We work to help caregivers understand the value of education and redress harmful gender biases. 

Our education model offers equal opportunities to both boys and girls, and we connect students with mentors and graduates in order for students to see what careers are possible. Increased education can lead to increased employment opportunities and a way out of generational poverty.

We are proud that the graduates of our Kopila Valley School are, very often, the first in their families to attend school and to obtain full-time jobs in the formal marketplace. They have been able to move out of their situations of hopelessness and into a healthy mindset where they can dream. They are also current and future problem-solvers for environmental challenges in their community.

We have been working in community development in Surkhet for more than 15 years. We listen and work together with a variety of stakeholders in order to jointly create solutions to community needs, with the school and with all of our programs. 

In 2007, after witnessing first-hand how poverty prevented many of Surkhet's extraordinary children from living the lives they deserved, American Maggie Doyne joined forces with Nepali Tope Malla — himself an orphan who had grown up in Nepal and built a career supporting children — and together they founded the Kopila Valley Children’s Home. As the team invested in the community, the need for a school became apparent, and Kopila Valley School opened in 2010. In addition to the home and school, Kopila Valley runs a Health & Wellness program, a Women's Center, a home for at-risk youth girls, a Futures Career Readiness Program, and an integrated Sustainability Program across all initiatives.

Kopila Valley is uniquely the greenest school in Nepal. We incorporate our core values of sustainability, gender equality, and economic empowerment into our work. Not only have we built an entirely green and sustainable campus for the new school, but  sustainability is also embedded in the school’s curriculum to train future leaders to solve social problems. Major outcomes include the reduction of the school’s carbon footprint, environmental studies that prepare students for future careers, and conservation and environmental sustainability practices that are spreading from students, teachers, and staff to families and across the community.

We are a grassroots organization working together with the local community. Members of the community serve on our Leadership Board, and many community members joined in the construction of our new green school campus. Our teachers and support staff are local citizens who are dedicated to student learning that prepares them for a bright future.

Because of this deep investment in our community and people, we have learned how to collaborate with local governments and other agencies. We do not seek to take charge of solutions for other communities, but to create a partnership model that others can adapt to their own contexts.

We are working to test our school partnerships model in our own community, and then to grow and scale it, in order to share our learning in an open-source format, increase the quality of education for more children, and inspire more communities to take action to solve the world’s pressing challenges. We will not be expanding to other communities, but instead we wish to share our knowledge and empower others to make changes in their own communities, adapted to their own contexts.

We would be grateful for additional guidance and support regarding our scaling model, testing phases, and measurement. We are working to improve our monitoring and impact measurement processes in our own school, as well as to establish measures for the partnership model, in order to prove the model and its impact as we launch it. We would also be able to expand our partnerships to more schools if we are connected with additional funding.

We help people who have been marginalized to take leadership roles in their own community solutions.

This begins with high-quality education and programs for people who have the fewest resources. This radical idea is changing the community mindset about the services that impoverished people deserve and the skills that they have to offer.

Providing education to an underserved population in Nepal is innovative in itself, and the school goes beyond this to provide world-class education that integrates environmental concerns and well-being of the whole person into its curriculum.

The Family Development Program, an outreach of the school, collaborates with caregivers to address the needs of families at risk. Mental wellbeing is also enhanced from connection with nature and integrated counseling services.

Our Sustainability Program is implemented across all other programs, and students initiate eco-conscious projects and share these with their families and community.

Contrary to community gender norms, Women’s Center trainees are starting businesses, mentoring other women, and investing their earnings in their families.

The entire community is included in these efforts and is implementing sustainable practices. Additionally, there are environmental care training activities for residents in the area surrounding the school and throughout the Surkhet community. 

Our new STEPS school partnership program is centered around quality education, first empowering other schools to follow our model for student education, and then to help schools expand outreach in their own communities as well.

We have partnered with some of the lowest-performing schools in the area – those with low academic scores as well as without running water, without bathrooms, and without lunch programs. We are helping them utilize the funds available from the government to improve these areas, as well as helping influence management, teaching methods, and the culture of the school. 

We are targeting increased school enrollment in the public schools, retention, and also enhancement of the capacity of public schools, resulting in the improved healthy lives of children and improved learning outcomes, with the further goal of reducing poverty and inequality in the region.

By partnering with public schools in our community first, we capitalize on the relationships built within the local municipality and perfect the partnership framework. In the future, this partnership model can deploy on a larger scale, allowing us to reach rural communities through their schools around the country of Nepal, and beyond. 

We will measure school retention rates, graduation rates, gender balance of attendees, teacher retention rates, and higher education and/or full-time employment achieved after graduation. In addition, we would like to monitor quality of life in the areas surrounding the school. Measurement and impact is one of the areas we are continuing to grow in.

By providing well-rounded, culturally-aligned, education to needful children with emphasis on early childhood development, core course mastery, ample enrichments, equitable access, health and wellness, place-based pedagogy, safety, service learning, sustainability and environment, an teacher development, we change the trajectory of our students’ lives so they:

• are physically and emotionally safe.

• are globally-minded with a desire to preserve the environment and have a positive impact.

• demonstrate empathy, kindness, and compassion towards one another.

• build confidence and self-worth through personal achievement and inclusivity.

• are passionate, lifelong learners.

• are well-prepared for the future and pursue advanced degrees or vocational programs suited to their best interests.

In doing so, we create the long-term impact of advancing the potential of each graduate’s educational attainment, economic opportunity, and overall wellbeing, and as a result, build a stronger, more resilient community.

We leverage modern learning and computer literacy, along with cultural heritage and place-based learning, in order to connect students with opportunities in the modern world and also preserve the local environment and culture. 

In addition to the core subjects studied by all students across grade levels, we strengthen our curriculum by emphasizing the teaching of ecology, environmental sustainability, gardening and outdoor education. Across the curriculum, we utilize place-based pedagogy to curate an understanding and respect for nature and our community. This is done by connecting our students to the local geography, environment, history, and cultural context. These curricular initiatives place a great deal of emphasis on experiential learning, environmental action, and community service. We also use it as a platform to introduce interdisciplinary approaches to learning.

We use modern technologies to increase digital literacy and access. The Learning Lab is physically arranged with different workstations and supportive learning environments, including WiFi, a whiteboard instruction area, a group learning space, and a comfortable learning area for reading and interactive tasks. We have invested in the development of each Learning Lab teacher by expanding their teaching qualifications in special education to ensure these students are supported as intentionally as possible.

Our eco-friendly school campus combines Nepali architecture with modern technology to use locally-sourced materials and reduce our carbon footprint. It is built using rammed earth walls for insulation, is powered fully by solar energy when the sun is shining, uses solar power to heat cooking oil, and reuses/recycles rainwater three ways – handwashing, filtered for drinking, and for cleaning and toilet flushing.

We incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into all of our programs. Since we have set out to provide resources to those who have the least, we have the privilege of seeing a wide diversity of people thrive with new opportunities.

Diversity: we hire primarily local residents, who are invested already in the community, to staff our programs. These are supplemented with employees who have come from other regions of Nepal, Asia, and a small percentage of remote global support staff. Our Co-Founders are American and Nepali, respectively, and they reflect the diversity and respect for other cultures that filters through the rest of our team.

Inclusion: on the new green school campus, we created a space where the community is welcome and every child is safe, educated, and loved. It is a teaching tool and a gathering space where people, no matter their gender, caste, religion, or creed can join in festivals, farmers’ markets, and educational programs.

Equity: in addition to providing opportunities for impoverished boys and girls, we work to reduce cultural education barriers, since deeply-rooted gender norms mean that school for girls and women has not been prioritized. Through community outreach, KVS staff work to identify and enroll students that would otherwise be unable to attend school. We work to help caregivers understand the value of education and redress harmful gender biases.

Women’s Center trainees are actively dispelling the idea that women cannot work and also maintain a family life. Women are starting businesses that improve their family income AND maintaining quality relationships. 

We seek equity with our gender equality initiatives: 

Through 2022, 299 women have been trained in vocational skills in the Women’s Center. Over 1000 women have participated in a weekend workshop or seminar.

The Big Sisters’ Home has hosted 24 girls ages 11-18. So far, 7 have graduated from Kopila Valley School and continued on to +2/vocational school.

Kopila Valley School has educated over 600 students, including 318 girls and 317 boys. We strive for 55% female enrollment each school year. Since 2017, 26 girls have participated in girls’ clubs and taken the lead to host female-focused issue workshops for other female students and the entire student body. Boys are also educated, alongside girls, about female issues such as dignified menstruation.

We are an INGO (International Non-Governmental Organization) governed by a Board of Directors and headed by our Co-Founders as CEO and Managing Director. Key customers include those who need services in the community of Surkhet, Nepal, donors in the U.S., the Netherlands, and across the globe, and a worldwide network of supporters. Our beneficiaries/customers come to use because we provide quality services that they are unable to obtain elsewhere. Our supporters and donors participate in our mission because they are interested in our innovative approaches or inspired by our transformational stories.

We incentivize for-profit business creation with our beneficiaries, including no-interest microloans for startup small businesses. With graduates of our Women’s Center training program, we supported the creation of Kopila Valley Women’s Cooperative, a handmade goods company. We also anticipate the creation of a new venture for women who wish to learn Compressed Stabilized Earth Brick (CSEB) technology, as well as a variety of other future ventures.

We have sustained donations, grants, and prizes for the 15 years that we have been in operation. We anticipate this will continue, and we anticipate launching a number of social enterprises that will operate independently, with revenue exceeding their costs, and providing jobs in our community.

We have received numerous $100,000 USD prizes/awards that help us launch large projects, but our primary source of donations is individuals who are committed to regular giving and believe in our mission. Large awards have included the Norman Borlaug Humanitarian Award, Do Something Award, and a prize from Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.