Project Impact

CWS’s current projects aim to help lift Nepal’s next generation out of poverty and into a healthy life with dignity.

These projects are designed to fit together in a net of support that carries a child safely from early education to respectable and sustainable employment as a young adult.

The ECCE was CWS’ flagship project to improve Early Childhood Development classroom and child development activities to early grade children in government schools and ECD centres in rural areas of Kaski district in Nepal. This project was completed in April 2019. Between 1995 and 2006, CWS set up 14 Day Care Health Centres where young children in remote hill villages could be kept safe while their parents were working in the fields as well as receive pre-school education and primary healthcare. The primary purpose of the centres was to combat child mortality as one in three children never reached their fifth birthday during the 1990s. (Today, the child mortality rate is greatly improved at less than 4%)

Due to the Day Care Health Centres ability to decrease child mortality in the villages where they operated, today it is now national policy that all village children have access to such care. Recognizing the effectiveness of CWS’s original centres, the Nepalese government has now taken ownership of the 14 original centres.

In 2013, CWS realized that there was a gap between the government’s desire to expand the original programme into new villages and its ability to do so. In response, CWS established the ECCE programme that aimed to jump-start the government’s plans by supporting government and community schools with teaching materials, teacher training and other types of support that improved their effectiveness. Each ECCE received CWS support for two years while preparing to operate independently after CWS’s exit. In the reporting period 2018/2019, CWS has supported 36 ECD centres that directly benefitted 432 children, 52 ECD facilitators and 29 teachers.

Two-thirds of Nepalese students who enroll in school drop-out before they complete secondary education at the age of 16. This not only has a critical effect on the students’ ability to find healthy, sustainable employment as adults, but also makes them extremely vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation as they leave the protection of regular school attendance.

CWS’s Child Friendly School (“CFS”) Programme aims to prevent school drop-outs by making schools comfortable and attractive enough to keep students coming back day after day until they graduate from secondary school.

The CFS Programme enhances government schools not only with necessary sanitation (e.g. clean drinking water, separate toilets for girls who may not come to school otherwise when they are menstruating) but also with attractive classrooms and playgrounds, and training for teachers in methods that keep students engaged with fun and effective lessons.

During the last four years, CWS has supported 48 community schools in remote hill regions with CFS enhancements. This has benefitted 4,400 students, 360 teachers, and 48 school management committees. In 2019, a second-phase programme will commence that aims to add another 36 schools to the programme over a five-year period.

As part of CWS’s Child Friendly School efforts, it has established two extra-curricular activities in selected schools that teach students about child’s rights and then guide them in advocating for these rights using art and radio programming. This is an important programme in a country where 82% of children under 14 experience violent discipline, 37% are engaged in child labour, and 1.2 million minors are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation or involuntary servitude.

Children enrolled in the radio programme research and write 30-minute segments on issues such as domestic violence, child labour, sexual exploitation, and ways that children can protect themselves from child rights abuses. They then produce and broadcast these shows live. Children in the art programme are given art supplies and instruction and are asked to use their creativity to produce works that are used to raise awareness of child’s rights in the greater community. Their work is then used to produce booklets and stickers that are distributed to schools, police stations, and community centres and public murals painted along busy streets that send a powerful message by children for children alerting them to their rights.

The radio programme gives over 300 students the skills to produces approximately 52 new episodes a year that are broadcast over 9 different FM stations. The art programme was made available to 267 children in 20 schools and outreach centres. While over 500 students were directly involved in these programmes, thousands others were recipients of their very heart-felt and important message about child’s rights.

Kopila Safe Home is the only home in Pokhara and the surrounding region to give security, shelter, counseling, and rehabilitation to female victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and mental illness caused by trauma.

Often times women arrive at the safe home with their children who also receive care. The goal of the programme is to reintegrate the women with their families after completing the appropriate psychiatric care and counseling. In some cases, when the women are still in their teens, they are directed into vocational training programmes and in other cases some of the women are given financial support to start income generating activities so that they may live independently.

In 2018, more than 50 women and children were supported with health care, counseling, and family integration by the Kopila Safe Home.

Star Children is a local NGO that provides healthcare, shelter, education and opportunities to children infected or affected with HIV/Aids in the Pokhara region. Due to Nepal’s very conservative society, these children would be ostracized without the protection and support offered by Star Children.

Due to CWS’s generous supporters, ten children infected or affected by HIV/Aids have been cared for in a group home, the Alexander Home, for the last ten years. These children receive medicine, health care, counseling, and loving care in a home overseen by two house mothers and a caretaker. The children also go to school and participate in sports with the support of Star Children staff who work with the teachers and coaches to assure that the children’s secret is kept and that they can live as normal of a childhood as possible. This year, two of the older children completed secondary education and entered into vocational training where they hope to be trained so that they may become self-supportive adults.

Over the last ten years, the Alexander Home has given continuous care to ten children who through no fault of their own will always be challenged by the effects of HIV/Aids. While the size of this group is small, the magnitude of impact on each of the individual’s lives is immeasurable.

Kopila Safe Home is the only home in Pokhara and the surrounding region to give security, shelter, counseling, and rehabilitation to female victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and mental illness caused by trauma.

Since its inception, the Safe Home Project has helped 300 females, 45% of which were under 19 years of age. Whilst most beneficiaries were victims of rape, sexual abuse and domestic violence, some came from trafficking background whilst a small number were mentally-challenged. Teenagers and even younger beneficiaries referred to the Safe Home Project constitute 60% of all referrals in last five years. At the same time, the SH Project recognizes that different types of victims require their unique set of assistance and support. Housing them under the same roof is not conducive to productive rehabilitation. So, Kopila Nepal together with CWS HK envision a separate home for young girls and children. Since, June 2020, a new shelter called The LETEPIA Girls Emergency Shelter started its operation to serve young girls and children affected by the home environment, survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse,and those suffering from trauma and light mental instability.

To date, 32 young girls received health care, counseling, and skills training at The LETEPIA Girls Emergency Shelter.

The FAB School provides world-class hospitality training to young people from dire backgrounds. These young people come from the streets, the slums, and desperately poor families. Some have been victims of trafficking or slave labour.

Once accepted into the school, the students receive not only training in food and beverage, housekeeping, and production (cooks), but a guaranteed job at graduation. This is achieved through partnerships with for-profit businesses such as hotels and restaurants who rely on the FAB school to provide high quality employees as well as others who fund the students training, uniforms, school supplies and employment documentation upon graduation.

Once employed, the students not only earn a fair wage that is capable of pulling the student out of poverty, but often times also pull their families out of poverty. The newly employed students often pay for their younger siblings’ education and their parents healthcare multiplying the impact of their FAB School opportunity. Most important, the students have been lifted past one of the most difficult hurdles in a young Nepalese’s life – finding respectable and sustainable employment.

Since 2017 when the FAB School opened its doors, 80 students have received training. Of these, 78 successfully completed the programme and 77 are now employed

CWS is now handing over these successful projects to the Nepalese government.

These projects would not exist had CWS not taken the initiative to design, manage, and fund these projects until they reached a stage that made it feasible for the government to step in and take ownership.

Since the 2015 earthquake devastated Nepal, CWS has been supporting relief and rebuilding efforts in Marpak, one of the most heavily effected districts. This May, CWS was elated when it was able to open the doors to five newly built schools in Marpak that will now provide a safe education to nearly 1,000 students. One final project, a community center which will give one of Marpak’s remote villages a place to gather for life-improving programmes, is planned to be opened in early 2019.

Asha Clinic was established in 2000 to provide primary care to impoverished mothers and children in Pokhara when there were no other clinics providing this type of care. Its primary aim was to reduce mother and child mortality and morbidity and its goal was to become a role model on which the government could build similar clinics in other communities.

Today, there are 13 government run health clinics based on the original ASHA clinic model and this year CWS is fully handing the original ASHA clinic over to the government for its management. CWS is very proud to know that during the last 18 years, the ASHA clinic has served over 600,000 women and children with life changing and lifesaving healthcare.