Samaanta Foundation rightly understood that the community is an excellent platform for its Fellows to learn and develop themselves. Hence, Samaanta Foundation has been making it possible for the Fellows to engage with our communities for intentional exchanges of knowledge and ideas. As a part of my community engagement activity, I offered a session at my school. The main goal of my session was to help reduce the dropout rate by informing students about possible pathways post-SEE. In recent times, there is a high flux of students in my community who are forced to drop out of school after SEE due to responsibilities towards their families and an acute information gap about possible options. Therefore, to fill this gap, I gave a session to students in grade ten on the topic of “What comes after SEE and how to get a scholarship”.
While preparing for the session, I quickly realized that similar sessions had been given before but they had mostly been limited to talking about the National Education Board. These sessions included little information on scholarships and did not cover all the other pathways for higher education that are available in Nepal. As a result, these sessions were not as fruitful for students. Therefore, with the aim to provide more information than previous attempts, I designed a session that covered all courses and scholarships available in Nepal.
I was excited about the session and overall it turned out to be a good experience. However, I also faced some challenges while preparing for it. It was difficult to find and compile information about the types of courses and scholarships available in Nepal. Similarly, it was quite challenging initially to convince the school administration to allow me to present on this topic. Lastly, it took some planning to make the session interesting, as it covered two different topics, what comes after SEE and how to get scholarships.
To overcome these challenges, I spent some time researching the types of courses and scholarships available in Nepal and also communicating with my teachers to gather more information. I convinced the school administration by clearly communicating the possible positive impacts of the presentation. To make the session more interesting, I included games like JQK and The Hanging Man.
Preparing and delivering this session has had a positive impact on my personal skills as I got to recognize my strengths and weaknesses giving me an opportunity to work on them. This community engagement project has helped me improve my public speaking and communication skills. Through my research, I have gained much knowledge about the education system in Nepal, including the available courses and scholarships for further study. In Nepal, there are three courses available: NEB, Diploma, and A-level. Among them, A-level was new to me, so I naturally looked further into it. I am now well aware of the available scholarships in Nepal and the required processes to follow, as well as the required documents to obtain different scholarships. Overall, it was an amazing experience to learn and develop my skills while gaining more confidence in the process.
- I improved my public speaking and communication skills.
- I have gained much knowledge about the education system in Nepal, including the available courses and scholarships. And what are the processes and documents for those scholarships?