Dubai Cares And Crescent Enterprises Open Doors Of New School For 160 Underprivileged Children In Nepal

More than 160 underprivileged children in a remote area of Nepal attended their first classes at a new school built through the partnership of Crescent Enterprises and Dubai Cares under its "Adopt a School" initiative, addressing the challenges children face in gaining access to quality primary education.

After one year of planning and 14 weeks of construction, the school in Piparkoti, Western Nepal, was officially inaugurated in a ceremony attended by Crescent Enterprises’ Corporate Social Responsibility Manager, Nermeen Mansour, and Dubai Cares Representatives, Mada Al Suwaidi and Asma Malik.

In addition to providing employment for 10 women and 10 men from the local community, the construction of the school was overseen by a committee of 12 villagers, with additional help from families in Piparkoti who contributed more than 1,600 volunteer work days to complete the building of three classrooms, fully furnished with desks, seats and chalkboards. The new school will hold classes up to grade 3 for boys and girls ages 5 to 12, under the instruction of three teachers, and will also serve as a space for adult education and literacy classes.

"Our ability to address the most critical issues facing our societies today and to lay the foundations for a sustainable future hinges on the education of our young people on a global scale," said Badr Jafar, Chief Executive Officer of Crescent Enterprises.

"Our partnership with Dubai Cares has created an opportunity to immediately address the acute lack of access to education in an area of the world that deeply needs attention, putting in place a solid infrastructure that will enable young minds to look beyond the limits they have faced and instead pursue goals that will allow them to build a better future for themselves, their communities, and ultimately the world at large," he added.

With approximately half of its population illiterate, the need to provide quality education is especially critical in Nepal. Piparkoti is a settlement of 1,875 people who mostly live as subsistence farmers, growing rice, wheat, oilseed, and vegetables. Before the Crescent Enterprises/Dubai Cares School was built, children in the village who did attend school studied in a makeshift mud and wood structure easily damaged during the annual monsoon season, while others were forced to walk approximately 1.5 km each day to another community in order to continue their education.

Tariq Al Gurg, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Cares, said, "We congratulate Crescent Enterprises for this milestone that has made education available for more children and women in western Nepal. Once again I commend organisations such as Crescent Enterprises, which not only believes in the power of community support, but also offers its employees a chance to contribute their time and effort by participating in building and running the contributed schools in Nepal as well as Gaza." Through its "Adopt a School" initiative, Dubai Cares has partnered with a number of other leading companies in the U.A.E. to fund and construct 20 schools throughout Gaza and Western Nepal. The philanthropic organisation has also established several other global initiatives to address the need for education, reaching 8 million children in 31 developing countries, including its recent "Burj of Giving" campaign in the U.A.E., which raised more than AED 1 million and was the first event supported by Crescent Enterprises following the signing of its 3-year partnership agreement with Dubai Cares.

Emirate:  Dubai

Date: Feb 18, 2014

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