Help Build a School in Nepal

The small country of Nepal boasts eight of the ten highest mountains in the world. But the very mountains that give Nepal its grandeur provide a challenge to building a sustainable infrastructure. Most of the population lives in rural areas where no phones, roads, clean water, or schools exist. Where government schools exist in the countryside, they are underfunded, very basic, and sometimes even unsafe. Often these schools have no blackboards and very little furniture. Supplementary materials such as libraries, children's books, and computer labs are rare.

This Gift That Gives More™ gives you the opportunity to help rectify the lack of schools by helping to fund construction of a four- to eight-room building to be used as a primary or secondary school. The vast majority of primary and secondary schools built in this way include a Room to Read library - often the first library the students have been able to use. These libraries provide extracurricular reading materials, games and activities that nurture intellectual curiosity and improve reading and critical thinking skills. These schools also include adequate toilet facilities, another relative novelty in many developing world school communities. These facilities improve hygiene and increase privacy, which leads to increased student retention rates, especially among girls.

Choose to participate at the $35 (1/1000th of a school) or $170 (1/200th of a school) level.

Since 1998, when Room to Read Founder John Wood delivered the first load of books to Nepal, Room to Read has established 2,931 libraries in Nepal, developed 142 local-language titles for distribution, supported 1,609 girls on its Girls' Education Program, and constructed 863 schools.