A Second Chance at Learning for Mother and Daughter
April 26th, 2018 | Stories
Sabium, 30, is a caring mother in Nepal who became head of her household when her husband left to find work as a migrant laborer in Doha. Providing food, fetching water, and caring for her children proved too challenging for Sabium to handle alone. Sabium’s oldest daughter, Khusabu, 12, had to drop out of grade 3 to help her mother.
Married as a child, Sabium never had the opportunity to participate in formal schooling. Her experience is common among women living her home district, Dhanusha, and neighboring districts along Nepal’s densely populated Indian border, which hosts the country’s highest numbers of people living below the poverty line and half of all of the out-of-school children in Nepal.
Like her mother, Khusabu was on a path to early marriage.
World Education is committed to ensuring that all girls can claim their right to education by addressing social and financial barriers. Our activities directly target out-of-school girls like Khusabu to enroll them in non-formal education classes and help them transition into formal school.
World Education also provides education classes for mothers while their daughters are learning. These classes focus on practical literacy and numeracy and empowering women with skills they can directly apply to their livelihoods to better support their families. We also work to build allies among community members, like Sabium, who will advocate for girls’ education.
Last year alone, 3,423 mothers of out-of-school girls and 4,406 of their daughters participated in intergenerational meetings that empowered the mothers to support their daughters’ education.
Through local outreach, Sabium and Khusabu learned about World Education’s Girls Access To Education (GATE) project and enrolled in classes.
Sabium is learning how to read, write, and use basic math to help her manage her family’s finances. Khusabu is learning about health and hygiene practices, the benefits of delaying marriage, and how to read and write in Nepali.
Sabium now understands the value of education and offers her full support for her daughter’s continued study.
Today, Sabium is hopeful that her daughter will have a better future than what was available to her.
Khusabu recently graduated from World Education’s GATE class and will enroll in Grade 4 at her local school.
Sabium is proud of Khusabu for focusing on her education and proud of herself for learning new skills that will help her family.
Since 1998, World Education has helped more than 100,000 girls like Khusabu continue their education through the GATE model in Nepal.
