Phase III
The third phase of RBPOP is focusing on its own district Lalitpur. With the objective of developing a child friendly culture, 13 schools have been selected as lead schools of Lalitpur. The project focuses on providing Leadership Trainings, Early Childhood Trainings and fostering Child-friendly Practices in the partner schools. The Project also aims to conduct STEM projects and Bal Sahitya Mahotsav in the respective Schools.
LEAD SCHOOL PROJECT
The Lead School Project is a three year project. Training for teachers on child development, as well as content areas such as Math, Science, Language Arts and Social Studies are being conducted. Training sessions also include topics such as classroom management and how to set up and run a library in the classroom or within the school and few parenting sessions. Some combined sessions of teachers and principals are also conducted in order to support them to work for the betterment of the students and to encourage better communication and cooperation between the teachers and school administration. The school leaders share how the training provided by RBPOP have helped them make positive impact on their schools. They also enjoyed a 3-day retreat.
As the part of the phase III project, RBPOP, with the help of trainers from Rato Bangala Foundation is helping the lead schools to organize Bal Sahitya Mahotsav (BSM) in their schools. Nine schools have successfully organized BSM in their schools so far. RBPOP also collaborated with Karkhana to conduct the Science Fellowship Program in the lead schools for students from Grade VI to VIII.
Early Childhood Development Project:
A well planned Early Childhood Development (ECD) program can provide great benefits to a child. RBPOP is now focusing on developing an effective ECD program to be implemented in 13 Lead schools of Lalitpur Cohort I and 10 schools of Lalitpur Cohort II . RBPOP sees this as an opportunity to improve the way children learn in the early years, thus making learning much more effective and bring about a positive impact on children’s capabilities. Research has shown that investment in the early years brings the most impressive returns. The initial one year Project for cohort I which was from April 2018 - April 2019 became successful and the activities for the second year has already started.
First year for cohort II has started from 20th June 2019. 33 EC teachers were provided training for 6 days as a first phase program.
As part of this project, RBPOP trained 83 students in cohort I for 10 days and 65 students in cohort II for 02 days. The volunteers were the students from RBS and other partner schools, who were waiting for their SEE results and ready to work in Early Childhood classes while the teachers received their training. Teachers were provided 10 days face to face training. Ms Kalpana Parajuli, Early childhood teacher for over two decades led the trainings and also conducted demonstration classes in 13 lead schools. Trainers from Rato Bangala Foundation supported Preschool teachers in setting up 27 classrooms in 13 schools.
A complete set of Wooden blocks, Stationery, Puzzles, Children’s books, Song/Poem charts, Manipulative storage boxes, Trays, Floor cushions, puppets, Wooden figures for Science and Social Studies, Math materials, Organizing shelves, Flex on eleven essential Child Centered Practices were provided to the schools .
A landmark meeting was held at Rato Bangala School with the elected officials of Lalitpur Muncipality on 26 Sep 2018. Mayor Chiribabu Maharjan and Deputy Mayor Ms. Gita Satyal participated in the meeting along with ward chairs and education officials on interactive sessions on early childhood program in order to ensure holistic development of each child. The participants committed to focus on early childhood given that it is the most important stage in a child’s development.
Rapid Neurodevelopment Assessment (RNDA):
In 2019, RBPOP launched a new endeavour to train a group of educators in ways to use the Rapid Neurodevelopment Assessment (RNDA) tool, a tool new to Nepal. RNDA assesses eight neurodevelopment domains, plus two nutritional domains of stunting and wasting, of children from birth to 16 years. To understand this tool so that it can ultimately be implemented across Nepal, 3 teachers from RBS and trainers from RBF participated in an initial six-days training of trainers. On November 18, 2019, Report Dissemination Program of RNDA was organized to share the findings of a study done in eight child care centers of Lalitpur Metropolitan City. A total 136 children (0-7 years) were assessed during the study period from July 2019-Aug 2019.
Conferences
RBPOP is one of the sponsors of the ICQE (International Conference on Quality Education) and the Bal Sahitya Mahotsav. It makes it possible for government school teachers to attend the conferences, and to take BSM to the districts. In addition, the ICQE receives support for inviting international speakers conduct sessions.
Learning and Playing Materials Distribution: RBPOP distributed packets to 2,385 primary students and 1,000 EC students of 22 community schools in Lalitpur. These are the RBPOP partner schools where RBPOP is working on school culture and leadership, experiential learning skills, early childhood development, building child friendly practice and more. Each packet includes Nepali and English story books, pencils, erasers, Math and Language exercise books, sharpeners and 2 reusable cloth masks for each child. The books will ultimately go back to the school libraries. Also, the playing materials like shape stacks, shape box, puzzles , dices are distributed to each EC class .
Radio Program: Responding to the lockdown of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to reach children who are not connected to their schools, RBPOP has started a unique radio programme Radio Bal Sikai in collaboration with the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters of Nepal (ACORAB). This program has reached children all over the country through ACORAB's nationwide network.
