Education Week - May 13, 2015 - 7

School Restart Seen Crucial to Nepal Earthquake Recovery
By Liana Heitin
Chij K. Shrestha looked out on the town of
Bandipur, Nepal, as the dust cloud was dispersing
just after last month's devastating
earthquake. "The minute that cleared, I saw
these houses just going down, one after the
other," he said. Twenty-two houses in all collapsed
before his eyes.
The community learning center that
Mr. Shrestha runs there, in the mountains
about 90 miles west of Nepal's capital city of
Kathmandu, withstood the 7.8-magnitude
earthquake on April 25, and is now serving
as a shelter for several families who lost
their homes, as well as a gathering place for
children displaced from their houses and
schools.
About 5,000 schools-or 1 in every 7-have
been destroyed in Nepal, reports Save the
Children, a nonprofit based in Washington.
In the Gorkha district alone, where the epicenter
occurred, about 90 percent of schools
were demolished, affecting 75,000 children,
the group says. Official government figures,
which are still being tallied, are lower, but still
substantial.
Such devastation could affect students' educational
opportunities for years to come, experts
say.
Mr. Shrestha, a former vice president for
World Education, a Boston-based nonprofit,
who moved back to his Nepali hometown
years ago, has been helping ensure the children
are well-fed and cared for. One student
recently said he was "craving milk, so I
grabbed some milk and boiled eggs, and we
played games with [the children]," said Mr.
Shrestha. "Their parents were saying after
that this was the first time they were seeing
their children smiling."
Bandipur has fared better than Kathmandu
and many villages across the country,
where an estimated 7,000 people have
been killed. Within the country of 28 million
people, about 1.7 million children are still in
urgent need of aid because of the earthquake,
according to unicef.
For now, children's basic needs-shelter,
food, water, physical safety-are the top priority.
But representatives from aid groups
say that getting the education system going
again for students is of the utmost importance
as well.
"We work within the humanitarian system
to re-establish school as soon as possible," said
Eric Eversmann, the senior director for basic
education at Save the Children. "And we advocate
for it to be sooner than anyone thinks
is possible."
The country has about 3.2 million primary-school-age
children alone, according to
unesco, and the Nepali government, which
funds the majority of schools in the country,
has said that classes should resume May 15.
Providing Refuge
Schools offer safety and a place for students
"to get away from the hardship," said Trevor
Patzer, a co-founder of the Little Sisters Fund,
a small nonprofit based in Nepal that supports
girls' education. "They can start focusing
on the ABCs, and one, two, threes, instead of
focusing on, 'My house is destroyed.' "
Aid groups worry that young people without
supervision are vulnerable to child labor,
forced marriage, or trafficking. "People go to
ravaged societies to target children," said Mr.
Patzer.
Even if there is no physical school building,
teachers and students can begin gathering
outside or in tents or other undamaged buildings.
"Get them together because when they're
together, they're safe," said Mr. Patzer.
FROM LEFT:
A child from the learning
center in Bandipur, Nepal,
works to clear the rubble
from her family's home,
which was destroyed in the
April 25 earthquake.
Chij K. Shrestha, below,
plays with children at
the learning center in
Bandipur. The center now
serves as a shelter for
families who lost their
homes, and as a place for
children to go while the
community recovers
from the disaster. Aid
organizations say that
getting the nation's
education system running
again is a key part of the
recovery process, which
is expected to take years.
Giving students a place to go also frees up
their families to begin figuring out what to do
next.
The United Nations has put out a flash
appeal for $415 million from international
donors, about $20 million of which will go toward
immediate education needs, including
setting up temporary learning spaces. Such
spaces differ from regular schools in that students
often come in shifts for just a few hours
at a time. Rather than the typical school curriculum,
students may learn about continued
safety during aftershocks and how to determine
if drinking water is safe. Teachers can
also begin to address students' psychosocial
needs.
Future Risks
Many say that a saving grace of the earthquake
was that it happened on a Saturday
and just after the morning meal. Students
were not in school, and many people were outside
working rather than in their homes.
"So many children lived that would have
not survived had it been on a school day," said
Helen B. Sherpa, the program manager for
World Education in Nepal.
Now, though, there's another imminent risk:
monsoon season, which generally runs from
June to September. "Having the infrastructure
for schools at that point is going to be really
important because it's not going to be blue
skies all the time," said Mr. Patzer.
"When the monsoon comes, it's very difficult,"
said Ms. Sherpa, who is originally from
New Zealand but has lived in Nepal for more
than 30 years. "We're trying to get temporary
classrooms as quickly as we can and get children
back into that environment."
As for when schools realistically will reopen,
"I think it will be a rolling process as you get
out to the more heavily affected areas," said
Mr. Eversmann. "But provided the physical
space exists, and you can get supplies there,
schools should be up and running within the
month."
However, the actual rebuilding of schools
will take longer-some say between one and
two years.
That's frustrating to those working in development
because the Nepali education system
had made progress over the past decade, since
the civil war there ended. School enrollment
was up to 95 percent in recent years, according
to the Education for All Global Monitoring
Report.
"We were moving away from just access, on
to [learning] outcomes, and now we're back to
the access problem," said Ms. Sherpa. "A lot
of progress over the years could be badly set
back."
The anti-child-labor work that's gone on
could backtrack as well. "Most children were
in labor because they were out of school," said
Mr. Shrestha from Bandipur. "I'm afraid that
some of these things may happen again for the
children."
HELPING OUT The following organizations
are among the many currently providing
relief efforts in Nepal:
American Red Cross
Little Sisters Fund
Room to Read
Save the Children
UNICEF
World Education
World Vision
EDUCATION WEEK | May 13, 2015 | www.edweek.org | 7
Photos by Chij Shrestha
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Education Week - May 13, 2015

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