News from Nepal: An update
More news to share regarding Yubaraj's performance at school... Last week, Yubaraj showed us his report card (the first available since he started school). It showed that he failed 7 of his 11 classes, not 2 as he'd told us. He apologized for trying to falsify the report, saying he was worried we would stop our sponsorship if we knew that he'd failed so many classes. Also of concern was that the report showed that he has attended only half of his classes since starting school. With 20/20 hindsight, we should have been checking that over the past several months, but I didn't know the school kept track of attendance (it's a recent development) and in any case I wouldn't have thought in a million years that Yubaraj would be missing school.
Sudhir met with all of his teachers and they all suggest that he's struggling with the transition and should continue to get our support through at least the end of the year. They don't have any financial incentive to argue for that, so we're taking their suggestion at face value. We've already arranged for a tutor to work with Yubaraj. We're also requiring that each month through the end of the school year (in April) Yubaraj submit a report showing he's attending all classes before he'll receive the next month's allowance. And we've clarified our expectations that his grades should earn him a promotion to the next grade at the end of the year.
We're explicitly telling Yubaraj that any future dishonesty will result in a suspension of our sponsorship, and we're asking him to be upfront with us and explain the reason for the absences. Understanding why Yubaraj has missed so much school, and being able to trust what Yubaraj tells us, are important to all of us working to deliver this support.
We hope he'll share that information, and in the meantime we'll be tracking his school attendance closely and hope to have better news to share soon.
Sudhir met with all of his teachers and they all suggest that he's struggling with the transition and should continue to get our support through at least the end of the year. They don't have any financial incentive to argue for that, so we're taking their suggestion at face value. We've already arranged for a tutor to work with Yubaraj. We're also requiring that each month through the end of the school year (in April) Yubaraj submit a report showing he's attending all classes before he'll receive the next month's allowance. And we've clarified our expectations that his grades should earn him a promotion to the next grade at the end of the year.
We're explicitly telling Yubaraj that any future dishonesty will result in a suspension of our sponsorship, and we're asking him to be upfront with us and explain the reason for the absences. Understanding why Yubaraj has missed so much school, and being able to trust what Yubaraj tells us, are important to all of us working to deliver this support.
We hope he'll share that information, and in the meantime we'll be tracking his school attendance closely and hope to have better news to share soon.
posted by Christine Egger at 3:36 PM
2 Comments:
Does Yubaraj have anyone to help him with homework questions or projects or access to email/computers?
Very glad to receive your questions -- makes us feel good to know people are paying attention to what Yubaraj is doing, and what we're doing for him.
Yubaraj is meeting with a tutor daily now to help with those homework questions, and has been doing that since we received that poor report card. We're waiting on the results of his latest set of exams, which should be distributed in the next week or two, and hope to see that the tutoring is having a positive impact.
About access to email and computers, he visits the Mountain Fund office pretty much every week and can use the computers there, but from what we can tell he's not yet interested in doing that (using the computer requires a pretty steep learning curve -- to be able to communicate in English, and then to be able to type).
If this info triggers any suggestions or additional questions, please let us know!
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