Spring Newsletter 2021

School for Life
As school doors reopen in Nepal, Kenya and Denmark what does it look like for our HPF students?

The students at Human Practice Schools are returning to school with so much drive and energy to continue their learning. In 2021 we have already reached an important milestone.

We now have 75 government schools in Nepal and Kenya with 30,000 children under our wings and we have reached 50 completed school constructions. Now, we are working to reach 100 government schools and 40,000 children.

An entire generation has seen it’s education interrupted with approximately 91 percent of the world’s students out of school on and off for a year. Thus, we are so grateful to see our students back where they belong. For some of our students, returning to school means returning to a safe environment where they can get a good meal through their lunch program. For others it means time for laughter and fun at the playground – for all our students it means the return to a space where they can engage with their passions and learn. Here’s a glimpse of what the return to school looks like for our students in Nepal and Kenya. Our primary school students at Shambani Primary School in Kenya can now enjoy returning to their lunch program and our secondary students in Nepal can finally greet each other again and enjoy interactive learning such as in the science classroom.

Our Full School Model Works 

Learning has not been halted at our schools. In fact, the impact measurements conducted at our schools in Taplejung in Nepal show significant progress compared to a benchmark of the other public schools in Taplejung.  After only two years of operation (2018-2020), the average English learning achievement has increased by three times as much at Human Practice schools for grade 10-12 compared to our benchmark public schools in Taplejung. Likewise, the average learning achievement at HPF schools has increased by more than double as much for grade 10-12 as our benchmark schools in Taplejung.

At Human Practice schools  we have  further seen an increase in the grade 12 graduation rate of 120,5% since 2018 and a total of 88% of our students are now graduating grade 12. We are currently collecting more data from control schools on grade 12 graduation. We are also seeing great results on our drop out rates, today 3-4 out of 10 students, which would have dropped out of school in 2018 are now staying. Unfortunately, approximately 1 more student is dropping out at our benchmark schools today compared to 2018. Our distance learning initiatives in 2020 have been highly focused on graduating students, which is aligned with the particularly high results we see on grade10-12 learning outcomes.

Please find a summary of the results below:

“I Tuned in Daily for Radio Classes”

At HPF, we have remained committed to one thing during the lockdown – securing our students access to quality education. In Nepal, we have conducted lessons through a radio program and distributed self-learning material in collaboration with Unicef & Save The Children.  In Nepal many of our students have been able to return to a completely new school after the lockdown. We currently have 8 ongoing school constructions and 3 more will initiate in March. We have asked several children how their learning experience has been during the lockdown. Pawan who is a graduating student at Birenda Secondary School in Nepal, stated the following about his experience:

“It was on March 24th the government declared lockdown throughout the country and cancelled my examination. As the SEE examination is considered a major gateway for one’s own future career, I was taking this seriously and preparing well. My ambition was to pass the SEE with good scores and become a doctor thereafter. The announcement of postponing the exam less than 12 hours before start made all of this seem wasted. At times where everything was all closed and we were completely isolated from our teachers and friends, HPF started to broadcast an English Radio Program. I tuned in daily for radio classes. It helped me to prepare well for the examination. As a result, I secured a 3.6 GPA which is above 90 in percentage.”

We are so humbled and grateful that we have been able to find ways to continue our students learning in Nepal through our close collaboration with the Kavli Trust on our quality education program.

INGO Registration and Expansion in Kenya 

It is with great joy that we can share with all of you that we have now received our INGO registration in Kenya, enabling us to build our own implementing team in Kenya without using external contractors. Likewise, we are currently completing our tenth school building project in Kenya and look greatly forward to completing our eleventh with our own team.We have also recently entered into a partnership with Syngenta Foundation East Africa (SFEA). We are very proud to be collaborating with this leading corporate foundation in agriculture. SFEA helps smallholder farmers become more professional growers, and links them to markets in profitable ways. Together, we have designed an Agricultural Impact Program. Our aim is to introduce good-quality certified potato and bean seed, as well as more sustainable farming methods, on ten model farms at Human Practice partner schools. We are currently looking for organizations to partner with to reach our goal of initailly empowering 1000 smallholders to improve their food security and incomes.Human Practice Foundation brings quality education to communities, but also helps empower local people to find a path out of poverty and enjoy sustainable livelihoods. The program with SFEA will be a first step towards alleviating poverty in our Kenyan students’ households.

New Members of our Founding Partner Group

We are delighted to finally be able share with with all of you the expansions we have made to our invaluable Founding Partner group, enabling Human Practice Foundation’s ability to ensure that  100% of donor funding goes to project implementation in Nepal, Kenya and Denmark with zero leakage and absolute transparency. Jørgen Balle Olesen, founder of saxo.com, Claus Hommelhoff, founder of Formuepleje, Mads Ditlevsen, Partner and Head of EQT Partners Denmark and Thomas Klitbo former partner at IK Investment Partners in London have all decided to join our Founding Partner group.We are excited to see how our Founding Partner Group is growing with new ambitious and passionate people, who want to use their knowledge and resources to help bring quality education to rural communities in Nepal and Kenya and contribute to creating sustainable change in the developing world. A huge thank you to Jørgen, Claus, Mads and Thomas for joining us.The Founding Partners and supporters of Human Practice Foundation have big hearts and bright minds in common, relentlessly committed to bringing quality education to everyone. Combined, the sum of contributions is creating strong and long lasting change.

We would like to say a huge thank you to all of our incredible supporters for making this possible. We wish you all an incredible fall with your friends and family from the Human Practice Community.

Our Chapters in Sweden, UK, Switzerland and Denmark are working side by side with us towards expanding our network and helping us connect with more passionate and knowledgeable people, who want to help us reach our goals. We are so grateful for the work our Chapters do. As Nelson Mandela famously stated: “Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world.”

Warmest regards,
Pernille and HPF teams 

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