Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, February 24:

The Basic Education for Poverty Alleviation Project, started a year ago in Bungamati VDC, was successful in enabling communities to identify problems and utilise those to generate income.

According to project coordinator Dr Shreeram P Lamichhane, it was successful in arousing people’s concerns regarding the initiatives to be taken that would help them achieve meaningful changes.

The project was started as Bungmati Action Research programme sponsored by UNESCO, and under coordination of the Research Centre for Educational Innovation and Development (CERID).

Under the project, two training were conducted, one on entrepreneurship, the other on compost manure. These were meant particularly for teachers, community leaders and farmers.

One of the trainees Madhukar Tuladhar said it helped in improving their living standard. According to him, woodcarvers like him did not maintain their accounts earlier, but the short-term basic English training, provided to local entrepreneurs selling their work to foreigners, proved beneficial to their business.

Apart from this, the VDC is cleaner as the people after getting training, have started using the solid waste produced to prepare organic manure. Solid waste, environmental degradation were some of the main problems that were identified in Bungmati VDC.

The project has also helped the people to market their products and develop a network. This has helped them generate more income, hence, alleviating poverty.

“The main objectives are to develop functional literacy and empowerment through special training package and organisation,” said Lammichhane. “The project has become successful as it helped set up inter-institution-linkages at the local-level and beyond.”

The project identifies the factors needed to enable and empower people to a reflect on the poverty situation and plan for a better change, identify and mobilise resources with self-analysis for potential benefits and loss, and identify, seek and utilise various provisions of poverty alleviation.

Dr Bidhyanath Koirala said the government should encourage involvement of public and private partnership in such projects to encourage the participation of communities. “The government should link up non-formal education with skillful learning,” he said.