NJSI-Fe y Alegria Nepal national office has launched the Computer Animation and Graphics training for rural girls. The program is intended to give opportunity to learn computer, personality development, currier guidance and basic English to rural grils who have competed +2 and staying back home without going to University studies or waiting for admission in next three months. Food, Accommodation, and course are given free while they are also supported partially, if not fully for their travel.
The first batch form Kavre and Jhapa districts and one boy from Tipling started their training in September and completed in the first week of November 2022. Initially the one month is given training in English typing and getting familiar with computer. Then they were given advanced graphics and animation training.
The drawings and cartoon making programs like OpenToonz is highly useful in creating education content and making creative educational materials. These materials help the teachers to explain a topic in a short time since the visuals help the children to understand better. Moreover, digital content get the attention of the chidren very fast while the traditional teaching techniques literally bore the students.
As they are able to do drawings and animation, the text book based projects of science subjects are given to them from different classes. Each one has to do the animation for a particular chapter. The creation of the children are collected into a computer and given to the rural schools as teaching aid. Thus NJSI has the advantage of two birds in one shot, the girls get a livelihood training in computer while the rural students get digital study materials.
At the end of the three month training program, the students are give certificate which will be valuable for their job opportunities while the new computer knowledge gives them added advantage in higher studies. The students were grateful for the opportunities and they even highlighted the their confidence in self studies as they were trained to research and study by themselves and find solutions to the problems that could arise while dealing with computer graphics.
As we were finishing the earthquake interventions, yet another schools building was constructed and handed over in Charnavati municipality in Dolakha District on 30th November 2021. The school is situated at the edge of the village near the forest entrance and has the capacity of 152 children up to class 8.
This is one of the least developed schools in terms of infrastructure and teaching resources. The teachers have hardly any training in creative teaching techniques. NJSI has also taken the chance to improve the education here by establishing and education smart hub and linking them to our training programs and orientations.