Children

Education is vitally important as a tool to help people deal with both the effects of poverty and to work for themselves toward a better life.

The World Bank argues that educating children in economically developing countries is important according to the following reasons:

• It enables people to read, understand, communicate, and make decisions.
• It raises the ability to earn money - studies show that each additional year of education increases individual earnings by 10%.
• It adds to quality of life.
• It reduces ill-health by people making better decisions.
• It reduces the size of families.
• It is fundamental for the creation of free societies.
• It builds a more skilled national work force.
• It enables enterprise, problem solving, and innovation.

We at Himalayan Learning focus on a few interpretations of these facts. We believe that by helping children get an education we can do the following:

• Educating girls makes them less dependent on men and gives them the skills to challenge where and whom they feel necessary.
• Providing simple education for all children to benefit from is better than only helping a few.
• Education must be free of cultural, religious, sexist, ageist, disablist bias, particularly in Nepal's highly plural society.