Child Club Empowering Parbati Sinjali Magar and Her Family

Parbati Sinjali Magar, a 7-year-old girl, resides in Bhujel Gau, a village within Gaindakot municipality. Despite her parents’ involvement in agriculture and seasonal labor, Parbati’s education remains a priority.

She attends Juna Purba Basic School, which is approximately 1 kilometer away from her village. Accompanied by her older sister, who is in the first grade at the same school, Parbati walks the distance daily.

Parbati is the youngest of three sisters. Her mother, Gopi Maya shares that her husband and she have not completed their schooling by being engaged in household responsibilities at a young age.

With this, she also admits that she and her husband cannot guide and pay much attention to their children’s schooling. But they believe providing education to their girls will help them to secure a brighter future.

Juna Purba Basic School, managed by 3 teachers, serves a small community of children with total students 25-30 approximately.

The school had previously shut down due to resource scarcity but reopened upon the request of the local community after facing difficulty in accessing basic education for their children nearby their village.

Child clubs had significant impact in the lives of children and family

Besides the sustainability of the school, they have been facing a resource lack to maintain hygiene and sanitation in school premises.

Ms. Purna Maya Bhujel, head teacher of the school thanks Caritas Nepal to revive the child club through technical and in-kind support for conducting extracurricular activities and improving the hygiene and sanitation of the school.

She explains the revival of the child club not only served to improve school hygiene and sanitation but also helped raise awareness about societal issues within households and communities through school children.

Parbati’s involvement in the child club has had a significant impact on her and her family. She smiles and shares “I enjoy being engaged in the discussion, the group works and rally with their child club members and teacher”.

Breaking her finger, she remembers and reflects on her learning on the importance of child club, world environment day, world water day, health and sanitation, and tuberculosis prevention activities through the action learning methods for which she feels the benefit of being engaged in child club.

Parbati’s mother also shares she has learned a lot from her daughter and even started using electricity and water efficiently at home.