Dyola School Lunch Program

Steps Together’s mission is to provide underprivileged communities with the necessary materials to enable all people to receive the education they deserve. In 2017 Steps Together built a kindergarten in Siem Reap, Cambodia. This year we have decided to travel to a new country to help a new school community. We are now in Bhaktapur, Nepal working with the lovely children and staff from Dyola School. 

Dyola School is a primary school serving 30 students ranging from ages 3 to 14 from one of the most impoverished communities in the city of Bhaktapur. Until recently, many of the children we met at Dyola School had never attended school and at 12 could not even write their name. Most children from this community typically work in the street, begging and sifting through garbage in search of recyclable materials. The four teachers at Dyola School along with a partnering nonprofit, Happy Kids Center, have worked to get these children off the street and into school.These teachers are so passionate about their students’ education that they use 1/3 of their monthly salary to provide tiffin for their students. 

What is “tiffin,” you may ask? Tiffin is the Nepalese word for lunch. There is no government funded lunch programs in Nepal, so these educators choose to provide their students with a healthy prepared lunch out of their own pockets. 

Even though this means less income for the teachers, they know it is in the best interest for the students to provide them with lunch. Without this act of kindness, these students would not have access to a proper meal at lunch time. Children cannot succeed in school while hungry, so these students are significantly less likely to attend school when they aren’t receiving lunch. On Fridays which are half days, the students are not provided with a meal and the attendance rate drops to 1/3rd of the normal class size. That means that on average 66% of the children at Dyola School are missing around 15% of their school week. 

Our goal as an organization is to ensure these students are receiving the brain food they need to complete a full day of school, not at the expense of their already underpaid teachers. We are confident that by increasing the quality and regularity of these meals we will see a rise in enrollment, specifically on Fridays. The students will be more alert, happy and focused in school. This budget will allow the students to receive a nutritious lunch each school day for one year. Healthy lunches will provide these students the energy they need to stay focused and they will enjoy coming to school. We are looking forward to partnering with Dyola school and assisting the teachers and students as much as we can!

Now it’s time for us to ask for your help! Please accompany us on this journey with Dyola School!

Here is the breakdown:

- It cost 25 rupees to feed 1 student lunch ( $0.25)

- $1.50 to feed 1 student for a week

- $72 to feed 1 student for a school year