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NYOF selects highly talented and motivated girls of the "Dalit" (untouchable) caste, and donors sponsor the girls' education at top Nepali universities. Through their accomplishments, these young women will break down cultural barriers about the roles of women and Dalits in Nepali society.


Many Dalit children are forced to work...	and some are homeless...	the lucky ones are NYOF scholarships students

Empowering Dalit Daughters

In Nepali, the word “Dalit” denotes the untouchable caste. By any measure, the members of this caste are among the most downtrodden people anywhere. For hundreds of years, these occupation-based castes (e.g., tailors, metal and leather workers, basket weavers, potters, musicians, street cleaners), have endured social exclusion, discrimination, food shortages, lack of education, and violence. About 70% live below the poverty line. Many are forced to work as bonded laborers. There are about 5 million Dalits in Nepal.

Their life expectancy is seven years lower than the rest of the Nepali population, their female literacy rate shockingly low (12%), and their per capita income far less than the rest of the citizens of Nepal. The child and maternal mortality rates are twice as high as those of the rest of the population.

Most of them are deprived of an education, and those who do go to school often suffer segregation and discrimination in the classroom. NYOF gives special attention to the members of this community – we provide scholarships for 400 Dalit girls in remote villages in the lower grades and give some preference in college scholarships to Dalits. Nevertheless, their status remains at the very bottom of Nepali society.

This new project, which we call the Empowering Dalit Daughters program, seeks to promote education of young, able Dalit women by granting them special college scholarships. In the summer of 2006, our staff fanned out throughout the country to interview scholarship candidates. We chose 20 young women who did well on their college entrance examinations; some of them are extraordinary. They are now in Kathmandu, and we are providing them with leadership training, counseling and communications skills, and placing them in good colleges.

A female student from the Dalit community who can finish 10th grade (the end of high school in Nepal) and even qualify to take the college entrance examination is a rare thing, and those who pass with good marks even more rare. In a recent year’s college entrance examinations, only 112 Dalit women passed in First Division, whereas almost 11,000 non-Dalit women achieved these high marks. Although the government has a set-aside program for Dalits in medical school , the places often go begging because there are so few students who qualify for medical school. We hope to even the playing field in this regard.

It is our goal to provide these young women with an education which will motivate them to give back to their community some of the benefits they received from these scholarships. We hope that some will qualify to enter the professions – medical school, law school, engineering college, and business school, so that they will become the leaders of their communities. It is difficult to see how these beleaguered populations can raise themselves from their abject status without such help. (We are proud to say that two young Dalit women in NYOF’s program are an exception to the rule - one just graduated from medical school and another has just started. They plan to go back to their communities to practice.)

From a member of NYOF’s board of directors who visited the Dalit Girls’ Hostel in Kathmandu:

“Despite their underprivileged backgrounds, they are as bright, articulate and energetic as any young people anywhere. They all have goals. Every young woman with whom I spoke was very composed, and every one is extremely grateful for the opportunity that NYOF and our partner NGO’s are providing. There is every reason to believe they will succeed and have a real impact on their country.”

Yale Jones
Taos, NM

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