The Need FOr English-Language Education

​​In Nepal, English proficiency is a requirement for higher education and an advantage for potential career mobility. English is the medium of instruction for science, engineering, medicine, and technical programs in Nepali private schools and universities. It's also quite necessary in order to participate in Nepal's strongest industries of tourism, agriculture, and manufacturing. Insufficient English instruction causes issues in the proficiency and ability of students as they progress in the language, unsurprisingly limiting career options for public school students. This problem is cyclical and reinforcing. 

​By providing fluent English speakers in TTT partner schools, facilitating supplemental training for local teachers, and upgrading rural education facilities, we hope to break the cycle of stagnated English education and serve as a support system for local teachers trying to better their English skills. While we know that placing teachers temporarily in isolated Himalayan schools will not fix the root of this issue (which runs deeply all the way up through the branches of the Nepali government’s education system), we hope to better understand the barriers Nepali public schools are faced with and be able to provide both education and inspiration to the motivated students who see English as a useful tool for their futures.
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​FAST FACTS:

• YOU GET: The ability to experience home in another culture & the adventure of a lifetime
• THEY GET: An inspiring English education from someone fluent in the language.
• It’s a WIN-WIN!

TREK to TEach
​Organizational IMpact

Service and infrastructure projects

• School in Kliyu
• Library in Tolka
• ​Chhomrong Repair
• Ghandruk Drinking Fountain
• Kimche Fence

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kliyu's Shree Phumrokhun Baraha Secondary School building
Completed January 2020

Kliyu's main school building was destroyed in Nepal’s 2015 earthquake. The village had slowly rebuilt 2 stories, but they didn’t have the funding for the third floor or a roof to protect students from the elements.
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​TTT partnered with myTEFL to raise 14K to fund the completion of the building so Kliyu can restore their local school and educate their students. The room will be used for classes, extracurricular activities, meetings and dances.

Tolka Library
COmpleted May 2017

Tolka is a village of about 80 Nepali families living alongside trekkers finishing the Annapurna Circuit. It’s a poor community and its Shree Himalaya Secondary School had no library until Trek to Teach partnered with WINGS in 2016 and 2017. WINGS raised $5,300 for the build and TTT directed that money to gather materials and local laborers for the project. TTT volunteers and staff, the school’s teachers, and children from the child’s club helped complete all the arrangements for the library’s opening in May 2017. Guests from other TTT partner schools, ACAP representatives, and the school’s teachers, students, and students’ parents participated in the opening ceremony.

Chhomrong SChool Repair
Completed December 2017

​Chromrong’s Shree Dhaulashree Secondary School was in a state of disrepair. Though the government had funded part of its repairs and reconstruction, monsoon rains collapsed the progress, leaving the village without a completed building and without additional funding. For a long time the school’s play yard was riddled with hazardous materials, its classrooms were without paint. The classrooms’ doors shut only loosely, the window-holes let in chilly rains, and a derelict dormitory structure, incomplete and damaged by the monsoon, sat unfinished on school grounds. Trek to Teach helped to propper buy six new doors and eight new windows along with paint and toilets for two rooms in the newly built teacher dormitory building at the school.

Ghandruk Drinking Fountain
​Completed July 2015

Ghandruk is the largest village in the Annapurna area, with several thousand people and a medical centre. Its Shree Meshram Baraha Secondary School saw Trek to Teach’s first ever teacher in 2011. But it too is poor, and the school’s old drinking fountain had a single, decaying tap that splashed students’ ankles. To equip the school with clean drinking-water facilities, in June 2015 TTT raised $2,000, helped source labor and materials, and revealed the new fountain alongside school administrators and local leaders. The fountain’s five taps are fed by new, uncorroded pipes. We’re proud to contribute to our oldest partner school’s educational capacity and make students’ lives a little brighter.

Kimche fence 
Completed December 2018

In 2018 we worked with a local construction committee to build a fence around Jana Premi Lower Secondary School in Kimche because there was a steep cliff drop off that was unsafe for students. Our team provided funding, and together we constructed a wire fence both around the ECD playground and the school’s main building to make students more safe while at school.The school is now protected from a steep drop off and provides a safe area for students to play between classes and after school. The leftover budget for this project was used to paint the school’s office and walls and to fund some much needed minor maintenance work.

Nepal FOod Kits

The COVID-19 pandemic that rocked communities all over the globe in 2020 did not leave the villages of our students and partner schools unscathed. To help alleviate the huge health and financial burden that the pandemic placed on these Nepali communities, Trek to Teach has once again partnered with myTEFL in distributing emergency food and hygiene supplies to local families, working with our partner schools as distribution bases.

To learn more, check out blog posts written by our Executive Director, Ashley, about the urgent need for food kits as well as our distribution progress thus far.

Local Teacher Training and Partnerships

Trek To Teach's impact in the classroom doesn't stop when our teachers have said their sad, final goodbyes to their students. A sustainable educational impact entails building up to the main source of our students' English education: local teachers. Over the last few years, we have focused on incorporating local Nepali teachers into our efforts via training programs and partnerships:

Classroom CO-Teaching Partnerships

To ensure the diversified, effective ESL-teaching tactics brought to the classroom by TTT teachers carries long-term educational impact, we have facilitated co-teaching arrangements between our teachers and local Nepali staff. Inclusion of Nepali staff ensures the institutionalization of improved English-language learning techniques.

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'SOft skill' Workshops

Local Nepali teachers have also benefitted from a number of workshops led by TTT's Nepal-based team at our partner schools. They are aimed at providing the professional and pedagogical resources that are rarely available to rural teachers. Recent workshops include:

• Teaching Workshop (partnership with myTEFL)
• Classroom Non-Violence Focus Group Discussion 

academic impact

Last but certainly not least is the diligent classroom instruction carried out by our TTT teachers. Not only does the presence of native English-speaking teachers invigorate our students and keep them coming back to school day-in and day-out, but it has also lead to measurable improvement in the classroom!

Check the Impact Bar below for our most recent statistics!

​Students Served

​Since Day One!

Teaching Hours Logged

20% -- Average Testing Improvement