Village Junkiri is a community school started in September 2005 in a small farming village in Jhapa district in southeastern Nepal. Village Junkiri was founded by Nepali grassroots activist Indira Ranamagar in the place where she grew up. As she explains it,
“I wanted to create a library because when I was growing up in this village, we had no books, no pencils and very few resources. I was learning using a stick drawing in the mud.”
In September 2005, Indira visited her village during the Dashain holidays.
“I wanted to construct a small one-room building to act as a library for the children of the village. Within 6 days, I had created a beautiful library out of bamboo and mud, with a tin roof, complete with toilet. It turned out to be difficult to convince the villagers to help with the construction of the building, however, once it was built, everyone turned out to celebrate the opening of the building. They were all very excited to have this new library and the education that would be available to them and their children as a result.”
Indira learned that, by itself, a village library did not meet the educational needs of the local children.
“The library was not enough to motivate the children. So we started a part-time program with 2 teachers from 6 to 8 in the morning to help the children, to motivate them to go to school, and to teach them practical things, like personal hygiene and basic reading. We gave practical rewards like soap, nail cutters, combs, and paper and pencils. We also had activities like drawing and music because the students do not have these things in the government schools. Many children walked or rode a bicycle every day from as far away as 6 kilometers (4 miles) to be here. More than 60 children joined the program.”
In July 2007, a new, larger building with three classrooms was completed, and the Village Junkiri morning program expanded into a community school that is compatible with the Nepali village environment. 80 children are enrolled in Village Junkiri School.
“Many of the children who were enrolled in the regular school did not really go. They played on the way to school and then went back home. They spent the day washing buses to make money for their families, or they helped on the farms. Also, there is a large highway that the younger children cannot cross to get to the public school, so they ended up just playing in the mud as there was not much else to do. In the public school there are often more than 100 children in a classroom. Village Junkiri is a practical, community-based school. The children learn reading, writing, and math, and things like health and hygiene. They have cooking, art, music and other creative activities. They spend a lot of time outside the class learning farming, helping others, and teaching what they have learned to their families and the community. Our children will be leaders. They will learn to realize their own and their community’s potential and create new opportunities in their village. This is a very different vision than the kind of education currently available in other villages. We want Village Junkiri to serve as a model for what is possible in all of Nepal.”
Today, Village Junkiri continues to house a community library, provides a daily after school program for over 50 children who attend the government school, hosts regular village mothers’ meetings, and sponsors a youth football (soccer) team. Village Junkiri serves as a combination school, library, afterschool program, community center, and youth club all rolled into one.
