Chepang Village Support Project:
Nepal, a nation sandwiched between China and India is a mountainous country with many of the rural areas situated in the lap of the Himalayas and mid-mountain region with a very little or no proper road infrastructure. People still have to walk for long hours to find work or to get their daily necessities. Education facility in these areas is very basic and many of the schools lack proper building infrastructures, sanitary facilities, proper drinking water etc., let alone a playground or sports materials. There are also some areas where the school going children have to walk long hours to commute to their schools and back. Although the constitution of Nepal mandates that every citizen shall have the right to get compulsory and free education up to the basic level and free education up to the secondary level from the state, the school dropout is high especially among the girl students owing to lend support to their families in their daily household chores.
The onset of Covid Pandemic which surfaced in Wuhan, China on 17 November 2019 gradually started gripping the whole World segregating people from each other out of fear of the contagion putting major chunk of population all over the World in complete isolation. This resulted in not only crippling the economy of the so called rich and mighty nations but affected the majority of people living in the third world countries greatly; and especially people living in the rural area; as they had to struggle for their daily hand to mouth needs. The Covid induced lockdowns not only restricted the movement of people from one place to another but also largely impacted the income of the daily wage earners forcing them to look for help from other quarters.
Chepangs, who largely inhabit the upper section of Ichhakamana Rural Municipality, the only rural council in Chitwan District in Bagmati Province of Nepal, are “highly marginalized” community. Although no longer a nomadic tribe, they are highly backward and have largely preserved their unique tribal identity by maintaining their traditional knowledge system and continuing to practice animism.
The Project:
During one of his many Relief Missions, Saurav Rimal, Global Program Director at K Foundation Global based in Florida of the United States, witnessed the plight of the Chepang Community while visiting the area to distribute relief materials. Not only had the people from that area lacked basic necessities such as adequate food grains, drinking water, sanitation facilities, proper clothing etc. but also were deprived of their income as daily wage earners due to Covid Pandemic.
Tuntesh, located at Ward # 6 of Ichhakamana Rural Municipality of Chitwan District, is a village with 68 households of Chepang, Gharti and Gurung communities with the Chepangs comprising of almost 90% of the total population.
The village is located at the highest section of the Municipality at a distance of 24 km. from the main road-head and can be accessed from Jalbire near Mugling by driving 7 km. on proper road and further 17 km. of dirt road which takes a minimum of 2 hours.
The local produce of Millet and Maize supports food requirement for 3 or 4 months and for the rest of the months they are dependent on the local forest where they forage for root vegetables, i.e. yams, tubers etc. Due to inadequate food, most of the children in the area are malnourished. To support their livelihood, most of the elderly people walk down to the highway (6-7 hours walk one way) to find work as a daily wage earner.
The village does not have electricity and the drinking water is poorly managed let alone having proper sanitary facilities.
The village boasts of the only Primary School in the area called “Rastriya Adharbhoot Vidyalaya” (National Basic School) that was established in 1982 and teaches the students up to the Class V. The total enrollment of students for 2020/21 is 98 out of which 95 are from Chepang Community. The school dropout rate is high due to multiple reasons and higher in winter months due to lack of proper warm clothing.
The Project envisages strengthening the existing school by providing Infrastructural Support, Computer Hardware/Software, Photocopy Machine, Reading and Learning Materials, Supplementary Nutrition, School Uniform/Warm Clothes and Sports Equipment etc. to minimize the dropouts and create a proper and healthy education environment.
Also, the project aims to initiate several awareness and training programs for Women Empowerment and Income Generating Activities to uplift the living standards of the Chepang Community.
In short, the Project envisages adopting Tuntesh Village to create a model for sustainable development which then can be replicated to other needy communities in the future.
