Shanta, a student who completed 12th grade with NCEF's assistance, has been selected as one of the recipients of the Bo M Karlsson Foundation scholarship for 2008. The scholarship will fund her education towards a Bachelors degree in Education. Please stay tuned to our August newsletter to hear more about this incredible journey that took Shanta from being a daughter to a poor family to completing her 12th grade through NCEF's assistance. She is now on her way to pursue a Bachelors degree in Education.

Discussions continue regarding the need of a central person to coordinate the work of many areas in Nepal either as a volunteer or a paid staff. We prepared a document that describes the requirements and responsibilities of the position and circulated this document among people who might be interested in this position. We have short-listed two candidates for this position. Atul, our board member, is in Nepal and will interview the candidates. The candidates seem open to serving in this position as a volunteer for the time being.

Through its financial assistance program, NCEF makes education possible and affordable to many Nepalese children.  There are many Nepali children who need financial assistance to continue their education, but sadly we do not have enough resources to sponsor all the deserving students. From the applicant pool we have to make sure we select the neediest of all. This is an emotionally difficult task for the selection committee especially when you have a pool of applicants where everyone deserves funding for education.

The Team:

In order to make the selection process fair and democratic, NCEF creates a selection committee every year. This year I had an opportunity to head the selection committee and the panel consisted of these members:

• Anil Pachhai  (chair person)
• Maheshwor Kafle
• Bhusan Neupane
• Basu Dev Gnawali
• Pukar Malla
• Ashish Hada
• Nisha Thapa
  

Procedure:

We collected new applications from Nepalgunj, Patan, and Dolakha, and renewal applications from Nepalgunj, Palpa, Kavre, Kathmandu, Pokhara and Patan.

In the beginning of the year, we finalized the application forms. We made some changes from last year’s application/selection procedure.  One of the main changes was increasing the threshold of parent’s annual income. The change was to accommodate the inflation rate as well as to make the financial criteria more realistic. Other minor changes made the application easier to fill out. (Our application can be downloaded from http://www.nepalchildren.org/about.html#apps)

After finalizing the applications (both renewal and new application), they were emailed to our field volunteers in Nepal. Field volunteers distributed the new applications to school as well as to the parents. The volunteers also distributed renewal application to students who were sponsored last year in order to renew the funding.

Field volunteers collected the applications, academic reports, and recommendations. They scanned all these documents and emailed them to NCEF selection committee. After receiving all the materials, the applications were distributed to all the selection committee members.

The selection process:

Selection Results (as of July 10, 2008):

Results:

Altogether we have made decisions on 50 students this year (10 new students, 40 renewal students). We are still waiting for a few applications from renewal students. Some of our renewal students have taken the SLC examination this year; so we are also waiting for their SLC exam results. The decision on 10+2 students has not yet been made since we are waiting for grade 11 results to renew funding.

Out of 40 students approved for renewal of funding this year, two students required special consideration for funding approval. Under NCEF requirement, a student has to pass the final exam in order to be eligible for renewal of funding. One of our students failed the exam, however, after careful analysis of the situation, and strong recommendation from the student’s teachers and field volunteer, the selection committee decided to fund the student who now has an opportunity to improve his/her grades. The student has been given formal notice that the funding is contingent upon demonstrated improvement of his/her study. Another student had a monthly family income of NRs. 4150 while our cutoff for a family with one child is NRs. 4000 in urban areas. After some investigation, we decided to approve her funding this year because her mother holds a temporary job.

We have also asked our field volunteer to send the applications and academic reports/recommendations of NCEF sponsored students who failed the class so that the selection committee could review their application on case-by-case basis.

Geographic Distribution of Students

Gender Distribution

---

Acceptance Rate for New Applicants

Challenges:

One of the main challenges that selection committee faced this year was the inability to collect complete applications from Nepal on time. Most of the time, applications were incomplete, and some did not have academic reports. For renewal students we did not receive the applications of all students from each geographical location all at once. These problems led to the delay in student selection. The selection committee had to review the applications on an ongoing basis. This made the process challenging to get the ranking and review from all selection committee members on time. 
Similarly, some of the applications received were poorly scanned and therefore were difficult to read. Sometimes, applications from multiple applicants were sent in one email making it difficult to sort out proper applicants. There were cases where we had incomplete information from field volunteers making it hard to completely judge the applicants. In some locations the application form did not reach volunteers on time so they could not use the latest application forms.

Recommendations:
      
The main cause of delay for selection had been the applications not getting to the selection committee on time. NCEF should have a paid staff in Kathmandu who will take responsibility for collecting the paper-based application from all locations. That single person should scan and distribute the application forms to the selection committee. In the future we should come up with a web-based approach. The students and volunteers will fill out paper-based applications. The paid volunteer will do the data entry to our web-based database. This will significantly cut the decision time and will make it easy to maintain our student database. 

Decentralization of decision and collaboration:

This year, we partnered with Kehi Garun (KG), another volunteer organization in Nepal.  They helped us with selecting and identifying the deserving students. We asked KG to tentatively select students based on their selection criteria that incorporates locally relevant information (various subtle socio-economic indicators) that is readily available to them but not amenable to the documentation on our simple application forms. Then we combined their recommendations with ours to produce the final list of selected students in Patan. Going forward, we should also work on such collaboration in other areas.  Such collaraboration would help NCEF reach out to more deserving students and select the right applicants.

Acknowledgments: