This is a narrative about sustainable group growth, conservation training and the ability we every must make a distinction.
For me, it’s about much more than that, too. I’m a former journalism professor, however I’m not even going to try objectivity right here; that is advocacy, pure and easy. I need you to like this place and its individuals as a lot as I do.
Welcome to Kopila Valley College
After working with leaders and consultants in over 45 nations, Nepal’s Kopila Valley College is the single most exceptional, inspiring place I’ve ever been and essentially the most dedicated, vibrant, exceptional group of individuals I’ve seen work collectively.
So, I’m not shocked WWF Nepal has acknowledged Kopila Valley College because the Greatest Eco Membership in a Secondary College in Nepal. Its dedication to sustainability and fostering environmental connections for college students is a sight to behold—and one I’ve seen with my very own eyes.
I’ve additionally sat on the concrete flooring at lunchtime and eaten with the youngsters—tasty, nutritious meals they helped develop themselves and native Aunties ready utilizing a solar energy system on the cafeteria roof.
The photo voltaic cooking system consists of three rows of curved mirrors that focus daylight on an insulated pipe containing oil that’s heated to excessive temperatures after which transported down to pots within the kitchen. On a mean sunny day, the system can cook dinner rice, lentils and greens for 500 hungry individuals!
Lunch at Kopila Valley College Picture shared by BlinkNow Basis
WWF Nepal’s Dedication to Conservation Training
Over the course of its 30 years, WWF Nepal has maintained a twin mission: to cease the degradation of the pure atmosphere and construct a future wherein individuals stay in concord with nature.
That future relies upon upon Nepal’s youngsters.
So, WWF focuses nearly all of its efforts on conservation training. Conservation training is designed to instill a way of worth and stewardship in younger individuals throughout the nation so they take motion towards conservation and sustainable growth now and sooner or later.
(If in case you have youngsters or grandkids with whom you’d wish to share conservation tales, try WWF Nepal movies and books in English on the backside of the web page linked right here.)
Kopila Valley College in Surkhet, Nepal, September 17, 2022. Picture by Allison Shelley | Shared by BlinkNow Basis
From its inaugural college eco membership in 1994, WWF Nepal has sought to teach, interact and empower 500,000 youth by conservation training. The eco membership program emphasizes studying by doing and works towards making certain equitable entry to instructional assets, selling social motion fashions, and growing a nationwide youth community to construct pro-environment and biodiversity values.
WWF Nepal goals to create a era of Nepali youth dedicated to sustainable growth and biodiversity conservation that successfully engages and influences wider stakeholders.
That’s precisely what’s occurring at Kopila Valley. The youngsters will inform you about it themselves in English from the midway level (3:00) on this video shared on-line by WWF Nepal:
Hikmat Bhandari, workers mentor for the Ambassador Membership’s waste administration group, says this video contributed to the hands-on studying expertise that’s prevalent at Kopila Valley and needed in Nepal.
“College students in Nepal must find out about conservation to ascertain a way of connection and accountability towards the atmosphere and encourage them to turn out to be energetic contributors in conserving pure assets and the atmosphere for future generations. This additionally offers invaluable experiences and expertise that are useful to them in life, like analysis, public talking and policymaking.”
College students within the Sustainability Ambassadors Membership at Kopila Valley performed a key position in securing this award and created a video submission highlighting their work in 4 teams: forest hearth, plantation or cultivation and care, waste administration, and local weather change.
Every group research an environmental problem after which plans initiatives to take collective and collaborative motion. College students from grades 6–12 have the choice to take part on this membership, which presently boasts 38 members and hosts numerous eco initiatives and group service efforts through the yr.
In response to WWF Nepal, “This honor is awarded to instructional establishments which have demonstrated distinctive dedication and ingenuity in advancing environmental sustainability.”
Kopila Valley—Nepal’s Greenest College
What makes this award at this college particularly distinctive is that these youngsters will not be from well-connected households in Kathmandu or even in their personal group. The college is situated in Birendranagar, Surkhet district, in Nepal’s largest province, Karnali, 375 miles west of Kathmandu.
Each Nepal’s longest river and its two largest lakes are in Karnali, as are two nationwide parks, Rara and Shey Phoksundo. However Surkhet’s inhabitants has practically tripled within the final 40 years, placing monumental strain on assets and the atmosphere.
Nepal’s per capita revenue in fiscal yr 2022–2023 was roughly $1,381; in Karnali Province, it was simply $964. The Nepali common multidimensional poverty price is 17.4%; in Karnali Province, it’s 39.5%.
Since its inception, Kopila Valley College has undertaken rigorous admission processes to make sure that they’re figuring out and accepting youngsters who most often would haven’t any entry or alternative to attend college. It’s a not-for-profit, personal college providing free, world-class training (plus uniforms and meals) to over 425 college students from throughout the area.
Distinct from many colleges within the space, Kopila Valley affords one of the best training by an modern place-based energetic studying program, a modern, sustainable college campus, and complete, ongoing coaching of native lecturers and leaders.
Kopila Valley College in Birendranagar, Surkhet, Nepal | Picture courtesy of BlinkNow
Between the Mountain and the Sky: Maggie’s Story
If this story sounds acquainted, you could have heard of co-founder Maggie Doyne when she received the 2015 CNN Hero of the 12 months Award or was on the quilt of the New York Instances journal in 2010.
BlinkNow Co-founder & CEO, Maggie Doyne | Shared by BlinkNow Basis
I met Maggie in 2009 when she dreamed of opening an easier, bamboo-construction college close to the Youngsters’s Dwelling the place she lived with co-founder Tope Malla and his household and round 40 youngsters. She was 22 years outdated and had already lived in Nepal for a number of years.
Two issues struck me:
- She was a lot like me: We each grew up in middle-class, suburban American households, excelled in school and sports activities, beloved to journey…I think many individuals meet Maggie and assume they may very well be nice pals.
- There was one thing remarkably totally different about Maggie, although: At 22, she may rattle off any sustainable growth or early childhood growth statistic you’d ask her about, then join it to stakeholder considerations on the bottom in her area of Nepal and describe the truth of the households the numbers represented.
Within the subsequent breath, she would possibly inform you a totally gnarly story about treating a home full of youngsters with lice…or even worms. Then, her snicker would utterly captivate the room.
Maggie Doyne is the actual deal, as are co-founder Tope Malla and the groups on the bottom in Nepal and the USA. They’re constructing and dwelling an enormous, evolving imaginative and prescient of a world the place each little one is beloved, fed, educated and set as much as pay it ahead.
Maggie’s memoir, Between the Mountain and the Sky, was revealed in 2022 and is presently being made into a movie that may make its debut at Colorado’s Mountainfilm Pageant in Telluride.
A Mannequin for Conservation Training
Within the early years, Maggie and the group have been typically requested to fly world wide to construct faculties and advise on youngsters’s properties in different communities. I bear in mind her saying as soon as, “Everybody says we have now to scale, scale, scale.”
They selected to scale one other approach. Kopila Valley College is open from 7 within the morning till 6 within the night and affords a various curriculum—math, science, Nepali, English, social research, computer systems and artwork—for nursery by twelfth grade. It feeds tons of of individuals on daily basis and offers primary medical and dental care by its on-site clinic. Its Girls’s Middle produces textiles, occupational coaching, and employment alternatives.
One of many causes Kopila Valley’s house and college work so nicely is they’re completely entrenched within the explicit wants and community, tradition, and group wherein they function. It was a selection to remain in Surkhet and serve to one of the best of their potential, to construct native groups and partnerships, primarily based on native must assist transformation in the neighborhood.
The way in which BlinkNow and Kopila Valley scale is as a mannequin for different properties, faculties, and foundations that wish to develop and serve in regionally accountable methods. Need to learn to construct a motion or remodel a difficulty or space? You can find no higher case examine.
It’s a lesson for all of us that we will every have an effect on even the biggest, most overwhelming, seemingly intractable points.
For me, this relates on to conservation and local weather change mitigation. Each effort, each motion, is of worth, and nice management plus dedicated groups compound impression.
That precept is mirrored all through the college’s curriculum. College students at Kopila Valley don’t simply learn the way the college management protects the atmosphere—they truly work together with the meals system by planting and tending among the rice and different meals the group consumes annually. Youngsters even go to the landfill and municipal waste administration groups.
Every particular person performs his or her half, too: throughout the annual Earth Day week-long celebration, lecturers concentrate on the significance of the atmosphere, and choose workers members take part in permaculture coaching to be taught extra about Surkhet’s ecosystem. A cooperative that grew out of Kopila Valley’s vocational Girls’s Middle has even began promoting rice luggage repurposed into reusable totes to attenuate the necessity for single-use plastic.
Kopila Valley College WWF award-winning Eco Ambassador Membership | Picture by Robic Upadhayay courtesy of BlinkNow
This current recognition from WWF Nepal serves as a testomony to Kopila Valley College’s unwavering dedication to environmental conservation. The Ambassadors Membership and the college itself proceed to encourage and equip college students, in addition to the encircling group, to make a optimistic impression on the atmosphere.
Sustainability Ambassadors are consultants on all issues sustainability at Kopila Valley College: rammed earth, solar energy, recycling, and extra. They provide excursions to guests, lead group clean-ups, plant bushes, and encourage others to take motion for the planet.
Concerning the Sustainability Ambassadors, Maggie says,
“Our college’s sustainability program lays the groundwork for our kids’s thriving future. It fosters a deep appreciation for the atmosphere and the planet amongst our college students, equipping them with the data and talents essential to deal with future environmental challenges. We’re shaping leaders who will steer us towards a extra sustainable, equitable, and empathetic world.”
Conclusion
I’ve a sense that if I requested Maggie to assessment this text (I didn’t—she’s very busy), she would possibly ask me to tweak the paragraph that shares the share of the inhabitants dwelling in poverty. She would doubtless level to the exceptional magnificence and biodiversity of the area, the unbelievable assets which are out there regionally, how extremely hardworking persons are, how prepared persons are to work together…to the wonderful issues which are doable with assets.
Typically, after we assume and speak about locations world wide like Surkhet, growth and conservation appear at odds, and the distinction a small group of individuals could make feels restricted. WWF and Kopila Valley College acknowledge that conservation training can change that.
If I’ve discovered something from assembly the group at Kopila Valley College and seeing them at work myself, it’s this: constructing the best group to final over time, targeted on doing one of the best work doable, could make unbelievable desires a actuality.
For extra info:
If you need to see components of Nepal and the Himalayas for your self, think about Nat Hab’s Wild & Historic Himalaya: Nepal & Bhutan.
Take a digital tour of Nepal’s greenest college right here
The BlinkNow Basis began as a approach to supply training and a loving, caring house for impoverished and at-risk youngsters with out properties. It fulfills its mission by offering monetary assist and administration oversight to the Kopila Valley Youngsters’s Dwelling and Kopila Valley College in Surkhet, Nepal.
