Nepal
Vocational Integration | Protection from Violence 2015-2023
Girls' education: a hostel for Chepang teenagers
Isolated in the mountains, this hostel is a chance for girls from the Chepang ethnic group in Nepal to continue their studies and to escape the risks of violence and early marriage.
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The context
The Chepang are one of the poorest and most marginalized minorities in Nepal.
10,000 of them live in Dhading district, in hard-to-reach mountain areas, and 90% live below the poverty line.
Women often face a grueling daily workload and work about 30% more than men.
They rarely have access to the family budget and have no decision-making power over its use.
Schooling for adolescent girls is far from being a priority. Some girls have to walk up to 7 hours to get to college.
Violence of all kinds is part of their daily lives.
Married between 11 and 15 years old and pregnant at a very young age, they often experience significant physical and psychological health problems.
In addition, heavy alcohol consumption, especially among men, is one of the main causes of domestic violence.
Without change, the majority of girls are condemned to a life of insecurity.
The pursuit of studies is an opportunity for emancipation for these girls but also an opportunity for society as a whole: each additional year of schooling in a girl's life reduces the risk of death for her unborn child by 10% (UNICEF, 2013).
How is your donation used?
For every 100€ collected by Planète Enfants & Développement, 85€ are dedicated to our social mission.
Our projects are evaluated by independent firms. And our accounts are audited and certified each year by KPMG.
%
of Chepang live below the poverty line
of girls are married before 16 years old among the Chepang
hours of walking to reach the college
The project
As an association for girls' education, Planète Enfants & Développement and its local partner Prayas Nepal have been supporting a girls' home run by the Chepang Community Association since 2015.
Extremely dilapidated, it no longer meets any safety or health standards.
It is therefore becoming urgent to secure and improve the girls' living space, but also to reinforce their support to avoid discouragement and dropping out of school.
That is why we have launched the construction of a new hostel in 2020.
The new 300m² building, which is eco-responsible and earthquake-proof, is built on land made available to the Chepang Community Association by the local authorities of Gajuri, a town of about 10,000 inhabitants in the Dhading district.
This hostel is a chance for 30 girls to continue their studies and to envisage a future other than that of their motherswho are often illiterate, victims of violence and discrimination.
This hostel allows the girls to benefit from support courses in order to catch up on their studies and from advice on their professional orientation.
With the opening of this new boarding school, they will also be able to discover the virtues of individual and collective sports, which are not widely practiced among the Chepang.
Our goal within two years is for the Chepang Community Association and our partner Prayas Nepal to manage the home independently, so that more and more girls can have the same opportunities to continue their studies.
Other projects :
Nepal: the awakening of the little ones, a priority
Nepal: a social center for young prostitutes
Nepal: protection of women victims of sexual exploitation
Our partners in the field
Prayas Nepal:
Nepalese NGO which works particularly on the emancipation of women in very marginalized populations.