School Handover Inauguration Ceremony

15^th Gati-Freiberg Friendship Anniversary 2019

On 25^th April 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal causing severe destruction in 14 out of the 75 districts in the country. Two weeks later, on 12 May, another quake of 7.3 magnitudes hit, worsening the humanitarian situation. One of the earthquake centers during the time was the Sindhupalchok district that resulted in many school buildings to damage completely. Moreover, the devastating earthquake on 25^th April 2015 and its aftershocks badly destroyed more than 60 % of the schools in the highly affected districts. Since Namaste Nepal has been working for quality education during this critical period our main motive was to ensure that children read in a child-friendly and safe school environment. Accordingly, Namaste Nepal implemented School Reconstruction-Project in Barhabise municipality ward no 5 and 6 in the Sindhupalchok district. The project was implemented in the financial support of Namaste Nepal Freiberg, Buchen, and Delft. No one ever thought that the project and the responsibility of Namaste Nepal could incline in this height with the responsibility of building 8 schools in Sindhupalchok. The project of building a school began with two school construction with a small number of funds. Our development partners from Germany and Netherland has played a vigorous role to raise fund for the construction of schools in Sindhupalchok. Namaste Nepal Freiberg, Namaste Nepal Grotius, and Namaste Nepal Buchen collect huge amounts of funds from the Nepallauf (Nepal Run) in their school where the event is organized every year.

Student welcoming the guest in School Building Inauguration and Handover Ceremony

The first two construction of school building begins in Shree Kali Devi Secondary School, Gati and Shree Seti Devi Basic School, Dandakateri. The miserable condition of the road due to the earthquake was a great challenge to transport the construction material to the school. However, the Namaste Nepal team didn't give up and continuously worked for the completion of the school building. By 2019, the Namaste Nepal project of School construction has been completed. Recently, our development partners from Germany and Netherland came to visit the project site of the Sindhupalchok district. On the same occasion, the School handover inauguration ceremony was organized in Shree Kali Devi Secondary School in Gati, Sindhupalchok. Due to limited time, all the 8 school handover inauguration ceremony was done in the same place. All the headteachers and School management committee chairperson from 8 different schools were invited to join a joint ceremony in Gati. The chief guest of the Joint Building Inauguration and handover ceremony was Honorable Minister for Industry, Tourism, Forest and Environment Province No 3, Honorable Minister Arun Nepal. And our other special guest was Deputy mayor of Barhabise Municipality Mrs. Sushila Pakhrin, District Education Development Coordination Unit Chief Mr. Krishna Subedi, Namaste Nepal Freiberg Project Coordinator, Mr. Steffen Judersleben, guest from Namaste Nepal Buchen, Namaste Nepal Grotius, NNK Secretariat, Mr. Vishow Raj Gyawali, NNK founder President Megh Bahadur Ale, current ward chairperson of Barhabise municipality plus the president of Namaste Nepal Mr. Mohan Lal Shrestha, Executive Director of Mid Bhotekoshi hydropower Dr. Sunil Kumar Lama. Also, national news reporters from different news media were also invited to the ceremony.

Chief Guest during School handover Inauguration Ceremony

The welcome speech in the program was given by Mr. Bharat Kumar Karki, one of the teachers from Shree Kali Devi Secondary School. He expressed a warm and heartily welcome to the program. He also thanked Namaste Nepal Freiberg, Buchen, Delft, and all other associates for kind support for the improvement of education and support to reconstruct eight schools building in the region. Students and teachers of Kali Devi Secondary School perform the welcome dance and song to our guests. Our first speaker in the program was ward chairperson, Mr. Mohan Lal Shrestha. In his speech, he said, "the school build by the Namaste Nepal is not less than any boarding school because of the environment and facility provided by the school". After the first speech was given, the small children from Shree Kali Devi Basic School danced to the song, "Balpanko Uumera". Also, the German Student from Freiberg and Buchen group performed a short drama on "Red Riding hood" in the school handover inauguration ceremony. After the performance, the students from the Freiberg group join to make Mo: Mo (dumpling) to sell for fundraising from the inauguration ceremony. They also helped in cooking other local foods. Our second speaker was Mr. Bel Bahadur. Rokka. After his speech, the students from Delft Group sang a song in the ceremony. The third speaker was the founder president of Namaste Nepal, Kathmandu Mr. Megh Bahadur Ale. He spoke for the remarkable deed and immense of Freiberg and Delft group for the development and building construction of school after the earthquake. He also speaks on the promotion of visit Nepal 2020 in Sindhupalchok. 

The welcome cultural program performed by the student and teachers

Then the letter of handover and the key to all the representatives' schools were handovers by the Namaste Nepal team and the Chief Guest. The Namaste Nepal organization handover the school in a hope that the disaster like earthquakes won't come again. Then together with all the school teachers and SMC members took a group picture. After the handover of the school building to all the representative school Dagmar from the Geschwister-School Freiberg group expresses that she is very proud of the student of Gati who has passed their SEE in the year 2019, with a good mark. Also she thanks all the teachers for helping a student to learn. She shared her opinion to everyone that the responsibility should be of school teachers and students to look after the school and develop it. Also, she requested everyone especially the youth not to go abroad rather develop the village in her speech. In the end, the speech by Dagmar turns to be very motivational to all the listeners.

Distribution of School handover certificate and Key to all the representative schools

Since the chief guest of the program Honorable Minister Mr. Arun Nepal has to leave earlier to attend a meeting in Kathmandu. He remarks on the program earlier than his turn asset on the program schedule. Minister Mr. Arun Nepal thanks entire development partners for such a humanitarian and kind contribution to the development of the education sector in Gati and neighboring villages. He also expressed his view regarding the development of education in Sindupalchok district in his speech. The project coordinator from the Namaste Nepal Freiberg group, Steffen was felicitated by token of love to Minister Mr. Arun Nepal.

Namaste Nepal felicitated SEE graduate student from Shree Kali Devi Secondary School. There was a total of 22 students who passed SEE. Namaste Nepal provided them the notebook and the pen as part of honoring the SEE student. After a while, the school handover inauguration ceremony was over.

Prepared by 

Jyotshana Ranjitkar(Assistant Coordinator)