Kathmandu School

EDUC-Nepal is a school in Kathmandu that provides a free education to underprivileged children from the Basundhara squatters’ area who would not otherwise have the opportunity to go to school. Each day the students of EDUC are given a hot lunch, clean drinking water, a uniform, school supplies and regularly health checks. There are currently around 70 students enrolled at EDUC.

The school was started in 2002 by Nepali sibling team Keshari (Principal), Bishnu (Chairman) and Beena (Head Teacher) and runs entirely on the support of local friends and family. The school has no donors. Board member Emma McDonald first met the team at EDUC in 2014 and has been a passionate advocate for the school ever since.

In 2015, the current rented school building was hit by the catastrophic earthquake and became an unsafe learning environment for the children. A block of land next to the current school became available for long-term lease, so Emma and the EDUC team in Kathmandu jumped at the opportunity to plan the construction of a new school building.

Through the support of many varied friends, the team has been planning, dreaming and fundraising for our new building for over two years. In June 2017, we finished building our new school, having raised over $20,000 AUD. The new earthquake-safe, prefabricated building is brilliant, painted deep red and supported by steel frames. There are four sizeable classrooms, a large staffroom, a paved outdoor area and roofing.

Over the coming months we will be fundraising the final $9,500 AUD needed to cover the costs of four additional rooms that have been built: a new kitchen, well for water storage, toilets and a private room for the caretaker.

In addition to all of our wonderful donors, special project thanks go to: Mr Dammar Gurung and his staff who designed and built our new school building, Architects Without Frontiers who linked us with the brilliant David Anderson (senior architect at HDR Rice Daubney), Professor Yadin Shrestha and his team at the Department of Engineering at Tribhuvan University, Andrew Middleton and the team at the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, Audrey Atkinson and her team at the Graduate Education Society, and Jeremi Wallace and his team at Echo International Aid. We could not have done this without you!

For more information about the project, please email Emma McDonald  em.e.mcdonald@gmail.com