Educate the Children, Inc.

ETC's mission is to work with women and children in Nepal to improve health, welfare, and self-sufficiency by building skills that families can pass down to later generations. In order to fulfill this mission, we strive for the following goals:

1. To ensure that women can become literate and numerate, start their own small businesses, gain personal confidence and social standing, and contribute significantly to their families' well being.

2. To ensure that children can attend and succeed in school even if their families cannot afford to send them, that their teachers have opportunities for training and professional development, and that the facilities are safe and adequately supplied.

3. To combat malnutrition and food insecurity by helping women farmers produce greater quantities of nutritious food, using low-cost, Earth-friendly methods.

ETC's program staff works intensively in a predefined geographic area for several years, providing training and resources as well as helping local residents develop the leadership skills and confidence that will enable them to manage the activities without external help. With one year remaining in a program cycle, ETC begins to phase out our involvement; by the end of the final year, the programs are fully managed and supported locally.

Our integrated community development program model includes three mutually reinforcing components:

1. Women's Empowerment: Through their participation in ETC-sponsored women's groups, women learn basic business skills such as handling money and keeping records, learn to establish their own small businesses to help support their families, and gain a stronger sense of self-worth. (The Sustainable Agricultural Development activities described below are also provided through the framework of the women's groups.)

2. Children's Education: ETC covers the costs of fees, uniforms, and supplies for children who would not otherwise be able to attend school. We also improve schools by training teachers; launching kindergarten programs; providing classroom supplies such as educational games, maps, charts, and musical instruments; and making physical improvements to the buildings, including ensuring the availability of clean drinking water.

3. Sustainable Agricultural Development: ETC training and resources improve nutrition and increase families' incomes. Agricultural activities include both crop farming and livestock management.

By involving local residents all along - during the planning, implementation, and evaluation stages of the program cycle - we ensure maximum "buy-in," maximum efficacy during the program cycle, and thus long-term sustainability. We do not seek to "do good" by rushing in to impose an inflexible program model upon an unprepared and possibly unwelcoming group of people. Instead, we go where we are invited, and all along we seek to learn from the residents - i.e., the actual program beneficiaries - what specific needs and challenges their communities face, and we tailor and adjust our programs accordingly.

Our work reaches across generations to ensure that members of a participating family will never again be illiterate or unable to earn a living.

ETC has more than a quarter of a century's experience in providing effective development programs in Nepal. The people who comprise our Nepal staff, led by Ms. Mira Rana (who joined ETC in 1994), possess extensive skills and knowledge in their specific fields (women's empowerment and rights, agriculture, and education) as well as excellent communications skills, knowledge of the culture in which they will be working, and deep commitment to the organization's mission.

ETC is grateful to acknowledge our supporters in the United States and in nations around the world. Many of our supporters have been involved with ETC for more than 10 years, and some for more than 20 years. They have told us that they support ETC not only because of a belief in the importance and efficacy of our work, but also because they are confident that their donations are used wisely and well.

ETC is pleased and proud to have enjoyed programmatic partnerships with many other governmental and non-governmental organizations over the decades. These include but are not limited to the Advocates for Human Rights (Minnesota); Faselung Social Services; the Resource Management and Rural Empowerment Centre; the Dolakha District Livestock Office; Nepal Netra Jyoti Sangh, a.k.a. the National Society for Comprehensive Eye Care; Nyayik Sansar Nepal, an initiative of the Israeli NGO Tevel b'Tzedik; the Rotary Club of Jawalakhel; and the Dolakha District Biogas Office. (All of these partners are located in Nepal unless otherwise noted.)

In 2009, ETC's long-term results from past program areas were studied by a team of independent evaluators. In general, the findings were very positive, especially as they related to the long-term benefits and sustainability of our work. A 2019 focused ethnographic study reported similar results. The evaluators noted many strengths and advantages that ETC possesses, which are not shared by all organizations similar in budget size and programmatic scope. Among these are:

(1) Effective focus on underserved populations (i.e., the very poor and socially marginalized)
(2) Effective local resources mobilization and collaboration with local institutions (i.e., leveraging partnerships with and support from other agencies)
(3) Local ownership (i.e., buy-in and commitment on the part of the program beneficiaries)
(4) Procedural simplicity
(5) Strong and regular monitoring
(6) Synergistic effect in communities served
(7) Transparency

Specific achievements from past program cycles have included the following:

(1) 91% of our literacy class participants have passed their exams, indicating that they have achieved at least basic literacy. Compare this to the national literacy rate among women, which is just over 50% at best and closer to 25% by some estimates.
(2) Participants have reported an average annual household income gains of $150 to $200 from women's ETC-trained income generating activities (which are usually agriculture in nature, thus serving the dual purpose of providing a family with more nutritious food). This amount represents, for many families, a 50% or greater increase in household income; some particularly successful women report that their household incomes increased by 100% or more.
(3) Women's status in their communities has improved dramatically due not only to their newfound literacy and financial contributions to their households and local economies, but also to their own much greater self-confidence.
(4) Every pre-primary (early education) classroom we have launched during earlier program cycles is still in operation.
(5) Virtually 100% of women's group members in our previous program areas continued to enroll their children in school after ETC left their areas. This occurred because families now have a heightened sense of the value of education and because, due to higher household incomes, they can afford to keep their children in school instead of having to withdraw them.