Education, sports and mobile phones

Welcome to the theme

It’s not always easy to be young or just a child – and that has its own reasons out in Nepal’s districts and villages. Going to school is a chapter of its own. Just this spring alone, thousands of students started the new school year without textbooks! Childhood in a village can be amazing in many ways. But looking into the future, huge unemployment and land scarcity can make opportunities seem very few. This theme is about that and much more! Check it out and stay tuned.

Congratulations U-19 team!

The U-19 national soccer team of Nepal did it for the first time ever! They are now SAFF Champions after defeating all South Asian opponents. Wow!! Left in the unforgiving trail of young Nepalese boots lie Bhutan and Bangladesh, Afghanistan – beaten in the semi-finals – and in the final match, arch-rival India! Who knows what these young players might not achieve in the years to come, not least when they start filling the ranks of the adult national team – and what upcoming talented teenage soccers they might have inspired already!

Here’s more on Nepal’s young soccer players – and on soccer teams, games and more from around the country. It’s kicking out there for sure:-) Check out GoalNepal.com!

Staring at the Iron Gate: SLC is coming up

These days our thoughts go out to Nepal’s young boys and girls who are about to face the SLC examination. Known as the “Iron Gate”, the examination is feared by thousands of youth every year – and for good reason. The odds of passing are simply poor. It’s not just that many of the students will get very low marks. No, most will not even pass. Last year, like in many previous years, only one-third of the SLC examinees made it. In total, 662,185 students took the test but only 217,211 pulled through! More…

Tribute to the village playground (Narayanghat)

They don’t have Ipads or play stations, like many kids do in “rich” countries, but they have so much more. Growing up along a river where everybody your own age is down on the banks, playing with one another and the environment, running into the neighbours place when not at home with the family having a snack or a nap, can seem nearly ideal to someone from a western country with “working mums” and “crowded kindergartens”. Or are we just romantizising? Well, in either case, here’s a tribute to such a village playground just outside Narayanghat – down by the river…

On the wall of death: meet a young woman rider!

Motorbikes and fast cars are conventionally a man thing. But not to a young woman down in Chitwan. To her, a fast-geared bike is as natural as a hair drier! Watch as she takes rounds inside an old-fashioned motordrome: on the wall of death. She is traveling with a whole crew of drivers – her being the only woman on the team – and she has made it her living. If there are few opportunities, well suddenly there is one, after all. Once seeing the drivers and trying it out herself, she just got caught and never looked back. Her family supports her too. Here she is – telling a bit about herself – up on the wall of death!

Textbook distribution: a scam that just won’t stop

What’s the annual budget for public education in Nepal? Well, this year it’s 80 billion rupees – four times the budget for agriculture, almost three times the budget for health, and in fact far above the budget for any other development sector in the country. With this budget, all school children would at least have basic things like textbooks for their studies, right? Wrong. This year, tens of thousands of students began the school year without books. Many students were still without textbooks several months into the first semester!

What’s the reason for the lacking distribution of school textbooks? Well, a great part of it seems to be “corruption”. The Ministry of Education has “outsourced” the responsibility for textbook printing and distribution to Janak Education Materials Center (JEMC) who in turn has outsourced part of the task to local printers. This whole arrangement has come to involve “commission” – the misappropriation of funds at different stages of the process – and as a result huge delays! The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) has been looking into the case but still the scam continues. More….

Kailali bought sixteen U17 football players for 13 lakh

Football is indeed loath with money in many countries and can be the road to prosperity for a young person. But is football a source of income and profit also in Nepal? To be sure, money is involved. As a case in point, the next winner of the National League tournament will be awarded one crores rupees! But check out another fact. Just now, Far Western Football Club (Kailali) bought sixteen Nepal U17 players for the tournament to maximise their chance of winning. Total price tag: 1.3 million rupees. It is unknown whether the players got a share in the money – but money sure plays a role!

NB: All Nepal Football Association hold tenders on U17 players, as well as players from Army teams, every year. Local clubs submit bids and the highest offer wins. This year, Rupandehi gave up in the tender and Kailali scored the sixteen U17 players, only few weeks before the tournament kicks off!

“National team midfielder Rohit Chand became the highest paid football player in Nepal as he signed a Rs. 150,000 [a month] record deal with Machhindra Football Club…” Rising Nepal, Oct. 9, 2013.

By the way: football is indeed a major field of corruption in Nepal. Here’s more…