About Sindhu Students' Hostel

After we were married in 2000, our first "baby" - the Sindhu Students Hostel was born. The Hostel serves to provide accommodation, food and education to students from the rural regions of Nepal. The name 'Sindhu' came about from our vision to increase the low literacy rate amongst the Tamang ethnic community in the Sindhupulchowk district, north-east of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Statistics reflected a scary low literacy rate of 20% amongst the Tamangs (1998). This may have changed through the years but the goal to make education accessible to all children and youth in the Tamang community living in the mountainuous terrain of Nepal remains a challenge.

The Hostel provides education opportunity for students from age ranging from 12 to 18. Most of the students had completed their elementary education but were unable to further their studies because high school could be more than an hour's walk away from their village. In many cases, the students would drop off from school; the boys would become extra help to their parents in the fields, whilst the girls would be arranged to be married off by their parents in their teenage years. Since most villages are subsistence farmers, they are unable to send their children for boarding schools in towns and cities. Though the students do not pay for staying the hostel, their

parents contribute in kind the crops that are produced in their fields, such as rice, potatoes or dried vegetables. The Goat-Rearing Programme was started in 2004 to provide another means for parents to be involved in the Hostel (Read about the Goat-rearing Programme in another post).

My First Post

That was us in SingMa Foodcourt - a Singaporean-Malaysian restaurant in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal. Asher, our eldest boy is with us enjoying familiar home food in a foreign land, where we have lived for the lat 10 years. Pasang (left) and I have been married since 2000 and we have been living and working in Nepal in the field of education. The Sindhu Students Hostel was started to support students from the remote parts of Nepal to continue their secondary school education where schools are not accessible in the mountainous regions of Nepal. Most of these students are from poor villages and most of them drop off from school.