Nepal Govt. Regd. No. 1224/064, SWC Affiliation No. 22612

Tracksuit & Bag Distribution

Helping the Public Schoolkids of the Mountain Communities by Providing Tracksuits, Schoolbags, Woolen Hats, Notebooks, White Shoes and Socks

Tracksuit & Bag Distribution is a project to give tracksuits, bags and other necessary materials to the public school students of rural communities, especially in Gorkha district. The project was born because we want to address some of the problems faced by the students of public schools in the rural mountain communities and make their student life easier. The project has been designed in consultation with school headmasters, teachers, students and local government authorities such as ward offices and rural municipality offices.

Nepal has private and public systems of education. Private schools are expensive, found mostly in urban areas and attended by the children from stronger economic backgrounds; whereas public schools are cheaper, found in both urban and rural areas and attended by the children from weaker economic backgrounds. Public schools are largely funded by the government and also by donors who want to help poor kids. These schools don’t have sufficient facilities that the students can use. The education in the public schools is free but for everything else, such as uniforms, books, shoes, stationeries items, etc, the students have to pay themselves and it is difficult to pay for these for most of the students whose families are in unstable financial conditions. Prem K Khatry, our President/Founder, grew up in the rural community and attended public schools all throughout his student life and he very well knows the problems and challenges of students in public schools. And through this project, he wants to address and solve these problems.

Why this project?

  1. The first and foremost reason is we want to solve the problems faced by the students of public schools.
  2. The project encourages the students to go to school. Giving tracksuits, bags, diaries, hats and shoes to the students is a great motivator for them to regularly come to school and not drop out.
  3. All the tracksuits, schoolbags and woolen hats have same color and make the students look similar to one another. This shows the unity and equality of the students. Through this, the project aims to give an important message that all students are equal and they all deserve equal treatment.
  4. The project helps the students to fight cold temperature as the tracksuits and woolen hats can be worn in winter. The students can wear other clothes inside the tracksuits, which isn’t that easy with their regular uniforms. In the villages in higher elevations which have lower temperatures than other areas and receive snowfalls in winter, we are giving the tracksuits with fleece lining to help them bear extreme temperatures. Some of these places have below zero temperatures and our tracksuits with fleece lining will help them a lot. Many of the students don’t come to the schools during winter because of cold and our project will prevent students from being absent and attend the school regularly.
  5. School diaries are a great help in effective learning as both students and teachers can easily check classwork & homework and measure performance.
  6. The project offloads some of the financial burden from economically-weak families by giving tracksuits, bags, diaries, hats and shoes to the students at free of cost and these families can spend their hard-earned money on other important stuff.
  7. The project promotes gender quality. Both girls and boys will receive and wear same tracksuits, which consists of jacket for the upper body and trousers/joggers for the lower body. Usually in public schools, the girls’ uniform is shirt and long skirts whereas the boys wear shirt and pants. Our project will provide same set of clothes to both male and female students to show that they are equal and that there shouldn’t be gender bias. Our project sends a message that it is important to send the girls to school, which will encourage the villagers to send both boys and girls to school.

Who are the beneficiaries?

  1. All the students, both boys and girls, of the public schools of municipalities and rural municipalities of Gorkha selected under this project.
  2. All the students of the public schools of mountain communities (All the public school students come economically weak background and the project will help them hugely).
  3. Parents of the benefiting students as they can spend their money on other important stuff such as food, medicine, etc and their kids can study well with our help.

Location:

The target location for this project is the entire Gorkha district, which is divided into two parliamentary constituencies: 1 and 2. Below is a list of municipalities and rural municipalities of each constituency and the number of students who have already received tracksuits, schoolbags, notebooks and woolen hats from us:

Constituency 1:

  1. Tsum Nubri Rural Municipality (Completed and distributed to 1,412 students in February 2021)
  2. Bhimsen Rural Municipality (Completed and distributed to 5,450 students in November 2021)
  3. Dharche Rural Municipality (Completed and distributed to 4,200 students in December 2021)
  4. Arughat Rural Municipality (Distributed to 1,550 students during the project pilot test in January 2020, and about 6,500 remaining students will receive in Phase II)
  5. Gorkha Municipality (Estimated 9,000 students will receive in Phase II)
  6. Sahid Lakhan Rural Municipality (Estimated 6,500 students will receive in Phase II)
  7. Gandaki Rural Municipality (Estimated 6,500 students will receive in Phase II)

Constituency 2 (Estimated total 25,000 students in Phase III):

  1. Ajirkot Rural Municipality
  2. Sulikot Rural Municipality
  3. Siranchowk Rural Municipality
  4. Palungtar Municipality

Note: The above data is updated in January 2022.

We have completed the distribution of materials in 3 rural municipalities: Tsum Nubri, Bhimsen Thapa and Dharche. During the pilot test of this project, we provided tracksuits to 1,550 students of Arughat Rural Municipality; there are many more students here to receive and we will provide the materials in the future. After that, we will continue to the remaining municipalities and rural municipalities of Constituency 1. Then, finally, if more funding is available to us, we will expand our project to Constituency 2.

Why Gorkha?

Nepal has many remote areas where a lot of people live in poverty and need help from others. Gorkha district is one of such places in Nepal. This is also the district where our President/Founder Prem K Khatry was born and raised. Like many noble men who want to give back to the society where they are from, Prem wants to do something for his home district, especially underprivileged communities, and make a huge difference in their lives. It’s very difficult for a single person to run charitable projects all over Nepal but Prem hopes that by implementing various philanthropic projects in Gorkha, he can inspire other capable people to do something for their district. If many people give back to their communities in all 77 districts of Nepal, it doesn’t take long for Nepal to develop and be a prosperous nation.

Our President/Founder Prem is also an adventure travel entrepreneur. He owns and runs a number of tourism & hospitality business ventures. To give back to his communities and help the underprivileged people, he started Sambhav Nepal in 2007. Our organization has since done many activities and projects such as school renovations, scholarship sponsorships, earthquake house & school rebuilding, toilet & library construction and so on. During the Covid-19 pandemic, which is still ongoing, our organization provided emergency response. We provided relief food items to needy families and medical supplies to fight the coronavirus. During the second Covid-19 wave in 2021, we also provided 6 fully-equipped ambulances to various municipalities and rural municipalities of Gorkha.

Melanie Kreuzer has been supporting Sambhav Nepal since 2008, but starting from 2015, she has become our most important partner. She started and registered Sambhav Nepal – Schweiz in Switzerland and is single-handedly responsible for expanding the scope of Sambhav Nepal. She is the planner, initiator and leader of many of the projects. Because of her efforts, Sambhav Nepal is expanding, operating multiple large and small projects, and bringing huge positive changes in Gorkha. We have been executing various important projects to benefit all the people of Gorkha such as Rebuild Home Gorkha, Bhawani Higher Secondary School Boarding House, Covid-19 Emergency Response, Bhairabi Primary School, Himalayan Ambulance, PCL Medical Courses, Personal Hygiene Kits and many more to come in the future. This has been all possible because of Melanie’s leadership and involvement. Melanie with Prem is planning several health, education, local economy and culture related projects which will have lasting positive effects on the people of Gorkha and will lead to a great development of Gorkha.

The project addresses and fulfills the need of tracksuits, school bags, woolen hats, notebooks and white shoes with socks for the students of public schools in Gorkha. These materials (some of which are introduced for the first time in public schools in Gorkha such as tracksuits and notebooks) make it easier for the students to study. By providing these to the students, the project aims to increase student retention, prevent school dropouts and promote effective learning. Most of the students in the public schools come from economically-weak families who can’t afford these materials, so we are donating these to the students and helping them.

The most important reasons we want to distribute woolen hats & tracksuits, especially tracksuits with fleece lining in higher altitude villages, is to help the students cope with freezing temperature and ensure they are able to attend their school regularly. The higher villages receive snowfall every winter season and the temperature drops below zero degree. Because of this, many students stop going to the schools and stay at home wasting their time. Our tracksuits with fleece lining and woolen hats will help the students to get warm and preserve heat in their body and go to their school in cold temperatures and stay in their classrooms to study. This will help to prevent students from being absent or dropout and encourage them to continue their education.

The main target of the project is to help about 66,000 students of public schools of Gorkha by distributing tracksuits, school bags, woolen hats, notebooks and white shoes with socks. Helping such a large number of students takes massive funding and time, so we are doing this project in various phases.

We initially conducted a pilot test in Jan 2020 to see the initial response from students and check if the project is a good idea to expand. We distributed tracksuits to 1,550 students of public schools in Ward No 7 and 8 of Arughat Rural Municipality (It is the birth village of our President/Founder Prem K Khatry). Our President/Founder is from these wards of Arughat and he wanted to collect feedback from the area he knows well. The pilot test was a great success and positively received by students, their families and the schools. We received requests from many schools and local government officials from all over Gorkha for tracksuits to be distributed to their students.

We started Phase I from Tsum Nubri Rural Municipality, which is the northernmost and remotest region of Gorkha and shares borders with Tibet. Under Phase I, we have completed distributing in Tsum Nubri, Bhimsen Thapa and Dharche Rural Municipalities. You can find more details in the Progress Details tab.

Our estimated target number of students for Phase II is 28,500 of Arughat Rural Municipality, Gorkha Municipality, Sahid Lakhan Rural Municipality and Gandaki Rural Municipality. It will be great if we receive funding for all these students at once. But, if we don’t have sufficient funding, we need the commitment for at least 6,500 students to start Phase II.

The materials we provide under this project are estimated to last for 3 years. So, we hope to redo the project in the same areas again after 3 years. We will provide the same materials to the students in Round 2 so that they can use our materials for next three years and comfortably continue their education. We hope we can do this project every three years and support the needy public school students. So, we are looking for a long-term donor to fund this project and make a difference in the lives of public school students.

Below is a table for each phase with its corresponding number of students and rural municipalities & municipalities:

Phases Rural Municipalities & Municipalities No of Students Materials Status
Pilot Test Arughat Rural Municipality 1,550 Tracksuits Completed in Jan 2020
Phase I Tsum Nubri Rural Municipality 1,412 Tracksuits, schoolbags, woolen hats and notebooks Completed in Feb 2021
Bhimsen Rural Muncipality 5,450 Tracksuits, schoolbags and notebooks Completed in Nov 2021
Dharche Rural Municipality 4,200 Tracksuits, schoolbags, woolen hats and notebooks Completed in Dec 2021
Phase II Arughat Rural Municipality Estimated 28,500 Tracksuits, schoolbags, notebooks and white shoes with socks Phase II not yet started. Shoes with socks will be added in the list of distribution items and all the students will receive woolen hats.
Gorkha Municipality
Sahid Lakhan Rural Municipality
Gandaki Rural Municipality
Phase III Ajirkot Rural Municipality Estimated 25,000 Tracksuits, schoolbags, notebooks and white shoes with socks All the students will receive all the materials in the list.
Sulikot Rural Municipality
Siranchowk Rural Municipality
Palungtar Municipality

Distribution Materials:

We are giving tracksuits, schoolbags, woolen hats, notebooks and white shoes with socks to the students of public schools. Below is their list of materials with a short description explaining their uses and importance:

  1. Tracksuits: Tracksuits are a set of jacket for the upper body and trousers/joggers for the lower body. They are multipurpose. They can be worn as school uniform when the students’ main uniform is dirty. They can be worn during sports activities. The tracksuits keep the students warm in winter. For higher-altitude villages with colder temperatures, we are providing tracksuits with fleece lining.


  2. Schoolbags: Many students don’t have a proper bag to carry their books and notebooks. So many of them actually carry their stuff on their hands openly or use plastic bags too. This leads to damaged and lost books and notebooks. The schoolbags we are providing will solve this issue. Our strong and long-lasting bag will help them to easily carry and protect their stuff in school.
  3. Woolen Hats: Most students don’t have protective headgear or use dirty, torn and thin hats to protect themselves from cold temperatures. The coldness in their bare heads can make it quite difficult to concentrate on their studies or worse can make them ill and force them to skip classes. Our hats will help them to prevent colds and focus on learning.
  4. Notebooks: In government schools, homework notebooks (aka school diaries) aren’t used. It’s difficult to manage and track homework for both students and teachers. To make things easier for both, we are distributing homework notebooks. Nobody has implement notebook system in public schools of Gorkha and we will be the first to do it. The notebooks assist the teachers to check which students are doing their homework or which aren’t. The notebooks will aid tremendously in learning and improving.

  5. White Shoes with Socks: Shoes with socks are great to protect the feet from various natural elements while living in the hills and mountains of Nepal. They are better protective than flip-flops. The shoes will be white in color and made from clothes while the socks will be either in blue or green in color depending on what’s available in the market. Plus the shoes are great for learning and practicing martial arts and various other sports. We are distributing shoes with socks from Phase II only as we identified the need for shoes during our Phase I distribution visits to
    Gorkha.

 

 

 FEBRUARY UPDATE 2023 (Latest Update)

After the successful completion of phase I of Tracksuit and School Bag Distribution Project, we are ready to announce for its second phase. The initial paper work of the project has been completed. We have received the acceptance of the proposal from Social Welfare Council, Nepal and the commitment from our donor as well.

In this second phase of Tracksuit and School Bag Distribution project, we are going to address all the students of 40 schools in Arughat Rural Municipality. The total number of targeted students under this second phase are 6,500. The materials to be distributed under this second phase of Tracksuit and School Bag Distribution Project for each students are:

  1. A set of Tracksuit
  2. 1 School Bag
  3. A pair of Shoe and sock
  4. 1 Woolen Cap
  5. 1 Homework Diary

The further process of the project will be done in accordance with the prepared project outline. We are so glad for being able to address the need of the students in the wider range in this second phase of our project.

DHARCHE RURAL MUNICIPALITY DISTRIBUTION – DECEMBER 2021

We are proud to announce that we have successfully completed Phase I of the project after distributing tracksuits, schoolbags, notebooks and woolen hats in all the wards (Ward No 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7) of Dharche Rural Municipality.

The distribution benefited 4,200 students of Dharche Rural Municipality. We went to the schools in all the wards and handed the materials to the students. We distributed them the materials in the right time as the temperatures have sharply decreased in the last week of December. The tracksuits and woolen hats have been a great help for the students during this current winter season. They are very happy to receive our gifts.

We had already manufactured the necessary materials for Dharche many months ago but we had to store them in the factory in Kathmandu because of Covid-19 and monsoon. Dharche also lies in the northern part of Gorkha and doesn’t have road networks like in lower areas of Gorkha, so the distribution was difficult and time consuming. But, now it’s completed and all the students of public schools of Dharche have received our materials.

We hope to start Phase II soon. We have estimated 28,500 as the number of target students for Phase II, which will cover Arughat Rural Municipality, Gorkha Municipality, Sahid Lakhan Rural Municipality and Gandaki Rural Municipality. But, if we don’t have sufficient funding, we need the commitment for at least 6,500 students to start Phase II.

BHIMSEN THAPA RURAL MUNICIPALITY DISTRIBUTION – NOVEMBER 2021

We have made a huge progress in our project. This month, from Oct 31 to Nov 03, we completed the distribution of tracksuits, schoolbags and notebooks in all the remaining wards (Ward No 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8) of Bhimsen Thapa Rural Municipality. Bhimsen is one of the important areas of the project and we are proud to have provided the items to all the public school students of this rural municipality.

In total, 5,450 students of Bhimsen Thapa RM have benefitted from this project. In March this year, we had distributed the items to 1,078 students of Ward No 01. And, in November this time, 4,372 students of the remaining wards received the items, just at a time when the winter is about to start.

Soon after the first distribution in Bhimsen Thapa RM in March, Nepal had the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic that caused nationwide lockdown. As a result, the schools were closed for a long time and they started the physical classes only before the Dashain festival.  In addition, the Covid-19 lockdown also caused the delay in manufacturing of additional tracksuits, schoolbags and notebooks. When the lockdown was eased up, the monsoon rains prevented us from organizing the distribution. This year the monsoon season lasted longer and we had many stronger & continuous rains.

We found the right time for distribution, just before the Tihar festival started. The winter is also just about to start, so we had to hurry up our distribution too. So, from Oct 031 to Nov 03, the Sambhav Nepal team lead by our Founder/President Prem K Khatry visited Bhimsen Thapa Rural Municipality and handed out the items to 4,372 students of all the public schools in Wards 2 to 8. It took us four full days to complete the work in this rural municipality and now the students will be able to use, especially their tracksuits, in this winter season.

Our project will now move to Dharche Rural Municipality. We are preparing the logistics and will soon depart for Dharche to carry out the distribution.

BHIMSEN THAPA RURAL MUNICIPALITY WARD NO 1 DISTRIBUTION WITH MELANIE KREUZER – MARCH 2021

In March, we completed the distribution of tracksuits, schoolbags and notebooks in Ward Number 01 of Bhimsen Thapa Rural Municipality (We didn’t distribute woolen hats because Bhimsen lies in lower altitude and the students don’t need hats). The items were jointly distributed by Melanie Kreuzer (President of Sambhav Nepal Switzerland), Prem K Khatry (Founder President of Sambhav Nepal) and Ishower Pandey (Chairman of Bhimsen Thapa Rural Municipality).

This distribution directly benefited 1,078 students of 6 schools. The names of the schools are:

  1. Bal Kalyan Primary School
  2. Nimel Primary School
  3. Kanakamana Adharbhut Basic School
  4. Chandeshowri Primary School
  5. Dullabh Secondary School
  6. Bindrawati Secondary School

We will continue our distribution project to the remaining wards and schools of Bhimsen Thapa Rural Municipality which has a total of 43 schools and 5,345 students. Once we have fully distributed here, we will move to Dharche Rural Municipality.

TSUM NUBRI RURAL MUNICIPALITY DISTRIBUTION – FEBRUARY 2021

In February, we started the project after completing all the necessary paperwork and manufacturing the items required for one rural municipality. We inaugurated the project by distributing tracksuits, schoolbags, woolen hats and notebooks in Tsum Nubri Rural Municipality. This has directly benefited 1,412 students of 20 public schools. Each student received one set of all four items.

Prakash Man Singh, former Deputy Prime Minister of Nepal and who is also the son of late Ganesh Man Singh (Ganesh Man Singh is known as the Father of Nepali Democracy), attended the starting event and inaugurated the project.

We couldn’t visit all 20 public schools due to time limit. Plus not all schools are connected by roads. Tsum Nubri is the northernmost region of Gorkha district and lies in high altitude Himalayan region and shares its northern borders with Tibet. So, we called teachers from other schools so that they can come to pick up the items for their students.

DOCUMENTATION AND PAPERWORK UPDATE – NOVEMBER 2020

Our project is moving forward smoothly. The following are the tasks we have completed:

  1. With the help of respective rural municipalities, we collected data regarding the number of students starting from ECD (Early Childhood Development) to grade 12.
  2. We prepared the project proposal and submitted to Social Welfare Council for approval.
  3. After Social Welfare Council approved our project, we received the funding for the project from our donors.
  4. We issued a tender notice to interested manufacturers in one of the major English newspapers in Nepal.
  5. We are currently in the process of selecting the right manufacturer.

In the future, we will complete the following tasks:

  1. Once we select the suitable manufacturer, the production of tracksuits and bags will start and continue.
  2. When the products are ready, tracksuits and bags will be packed and prepared for transporation to the schools and villages.
  3. Three team members from Sambhav Nepal, who are locally based within the project areas, will oversee the transportation and distribution of tracksuits and bags. We will transfer tracksuits and bags to the villages accessible by roads for distribution. For villages inaccessible by roads, we will hand over the transporation and distribution to the local ward and rural municipality offices.They will bear the cost for this distribution themselves.

After we distribute tracksuits and bags to 10,300 students, we will move to other rural municipalities. It will be better if we can continue this project for next years which will be enough to distrbute tracksuits and bags to all the students of public schools in Gorkha. But that will depend on whether we get donors for next phase. If funding is available, we surely want to help all students.

PROJECT PILOT TEST IN ARUGHAT RURAL MUNICIPALITY Ward No 7 & 8 – JANUARY 2020

Back in Janurary of this year, we conducted a pilot test for the project. At the time, we distributed 1,550 tracksuits to a few community schools of Arughat Rural Municipality. The response from the test was positive. We received requests from many schools and local government officials from all over Gorkha for tracksuits to be distributed to their students.  That motivated us to take our idea further and start the full project. We also decided that it’s better to distribute tracksuits as well as bags in higher villages first and then move to lower areas.

DHARCHE RURAL MUNICIPALITY DISTRIBUTION - DECEMBER 2021 (4,200 STUDENTS)

BHIMSEN THAPA RURAL MUNICIPALITY DISTRIBUTION - NOVEMBER 2021 (5,450 STUDENTS )

BHIMSEN THAPA RURAL MUNICIPALITY WARD NO 1 DISTRIBUTION WITH MELANIE KREUZER - MARCH 2021 (1,078 STUDENTS )

TSUM NUBRI RURAL MUNICIPALITY DISTRIBUTION - FEBRUARY 2021 (1,412 STUDENTS )

PROJECT PILOT TEST IN ARUGHAT RURAL MUNICIPALITY WARD NO 7 & 8 - JANUARY 2020 (1,550 STUDENTS)

Tracksuit & Bag Samples

DHARCHE RURAL MUNICIPALITY DISTRIBUTION – DECEMBER 2021

TSUM NUBRI (FEBRUARY 2021) & BHIMSEN THAPA (NOVEMBER 2021) RURAL
MUNICIPALITIES DISTRIBUTION

BHIMSEN THAPA RURAL MUNICIPALITY WARD NO 1 DISTRIBUTION WITH MELANIE
KREUZER – MARCH 2021

ARUGHAT RURAL MUNICIPALITY WARD NO 7 & 8 DISTRIBUTION – JANUARY 2020