Leadership Development of Bote Youths: Youths in Bote community in Baghkhor Village of Kawasoi Municipality-15 in Nawalparasi District (East) have engaged in different activities as part of self-strengthening and self-enhancing knowledge on bio-culture conservation status and practices in their territory. They organized series of community meetings, youth meetings and gatherings, carried out consultation meetings with their parents and elders to self-document bio-cultural diversity in their territory of life. The self-documented bio-cultural diversity include wild animals, birds, plant species, herbs and herbal medicines, names of the fishes, cultural tools, names of the food crops and vegetables in their village. Engagement in these activities helped develop leadership capacities of Bote youths in Baghkhor village. (Photo no. 1.1, 1.2, 1-3 and 1.2)

Enhancing community solidarity by promoting collective awareness and practice for the conservation of nature— an experimental curriculum for secondary school students and their families and teachers in a remote village of Nepal :

This project, planned to implement in October 2017 to September 2019 is financially supported by “Poul K. Feyerabend Foundation” in Switzerland. The general objective of the project is to enhance “community solidarity” through promoting collaborative actions among the students, teachers, parents/community-members, and social workers (“stakeholders”) in understanding the complex relation between nature and culture of the locality. While, the specific objective is to enhance practical knowledge on the importance of understanding nature-culture relation for biodiversity conservation to the students studying in Shree Simle Secondary School (4S) in Ribdung-Jaleshwori village in Eastern hill, Nepal. The practical knowledge is enhanced by facilitating collective actions among the stakeholders. The collective actions include community species inventory, community sensitizations work, and identify and implement at least an action for mitigating possible challenges.
The students studying in grade nine and ten in 4S will play proactive roles throughout the entire processes; while the teachers of 4S and the members of Ribdung-Jaleshwori Education Foundation (REF) will provide technical facilitation and guidance to the students. In addition, REF members will take an overall management responsibility of this project. Exploring collaboration and partnership with the local government line agencies and other potential development agencies will also be the responsibility of REF members. The head teacher of this school will contribute as the project advisor; while the science or environment teacher (one who involve in this initiative) will be the local contact person of this initiative. It is most important that the parents and community members will be the important collaborators in this initiative who will be the source of practical knowledge to the students.
The actions to be carried out throughout of entire processes of the proposed project will be defined and decided by the stakeholders themselves, particularly in the proactive leadership roles of the students studying in grade nine and ten of 4S. So, methodologically the entire processes of the proposed project will be considered as a “self-strengthening processes”.

Seed-Funds:

Ribdung-Jaleswori Education Foundation (REF) has policy to generate different forms of Seed-Funds for specific purposes such as supporting school education, health, infrastructure development etc. Recently, REF has total of NRs. 18,78,924 (donated by 56 individuals and 2 organizations) as seed funds collected for contributing to the quality education of school children at “Shree Simle Secondary School” in Jaleswori 1 of Khotang district (now this is ward number 4 of Aiselukharka village council). This Seed-Fund was collected before the formal registration of REF and kept in a saving and credit cooperative in the fixed deposit.