NCEF provides financial assistance that enables many poor Nepalese children to attend school. Many children in Nepal—especially those in rural areas—need financial assistance to continue their education. Due to limited resources, NCEF cannot support all the students that apply for financial assistance through our area coordinators. Every year, the task of the selection committee is to identify the neediest students for NCEF to support.

The Team:

The student selection committee for the 2011-2012 year consisted of Abhishek Sharma (Chair), Maheshwor Kafle, Rabin Aryal, and Suman Thapamagar.

Procedure:

NCEF currently operates in nine areas in Nepal: Chitwan, Dolakha, Kathmandu, Kavre, Nepalgunj, Patan, Sunsari, Urlabari, and Lamatar.  We collected applications for renewal of financial assistance from students in these areas. In addition, this year, NCEF decided to expand its support  by taking on additional students in Chitwan (ten students), Sunsari (six students), and Patan (three students).

The two main procedural components to the student selection process are the selection criteria and the application forms. This year, we did not make any significant changes to either, and used the same criteria and forms as the past two years after using them with great success and ease. Details about the student selection criteria and applications forms are available at:

• Selection Criteria
• Application for Financial Assistance

In 2010, we had added several questions in the new student application form, designed to assess the material wealth in a household (e.g., mobile phones, TV, radio, etc.) as well as the livestock owned by a family. This provided us with a better picture of the resources available to an applicant’s family. We continued to collect such information to assess new applicants this year as well.

We e-mailed the application forms to our field volunteers in Nepal, who then  distributed the new applications to schools as well as to parents.  They also distributed the renewal applications to all students that received financial assistance during the previous year.

Field volunteers collected the applications and academic reports from schools. They scanned all these documents and emailed them to NCEF selection committee. For each renewal applicant, they also provided us with their recommendation on whether or not NCEF should continue funding the student.  After receiving all the applications from an area, they were distributed to all selection committee members.

The Selection Process:

Renewal students: When deciding whether or not to renew a student’s funding, our goal was to verify three things: (1) has the student been promoted to the next class? (2) has the student’s financial condition improved to the point where they do not need NCEF support? (This happens on rare occasions), and (3) is the environment in a student’s home and his/her health good enough to allow the student to focus on his/her education?  If certain renewal applications require special consideration, we interact with the field volunteers for additional information and document any requirements that are waived.

New students: For each area, all committee member rank each applicant based on their application and the recommendations from field volunteers. The rankings from all selection committee members are averaged out to create a final ranking for that area. Top candidates from this list are selected for financial assistance.  Ties were resolved through discussion and voting amongst the selection committee members. All the selections should satisfy the NCEF criteria.

Results:

We selected 79 students in total. Some of the renewal applications were for students who had passed the SLC examination. These decisions could not be made until after the SLC examination results were declared, and hence, were made separately from the rest of the students. The following table shows the distribution of students across the various areas.

1. A majority of the NCEF students supported during the 2011-2012 school year did well academically, and their funding has been renewed for another year. In particular, students from the Dolakha area continue to perform exceptionally—4 out 7 students have consistently achieved 80-90% marks during the last three years; the other 3 students got 50-80% marks.
2. Two students from Chitwan failed and are repeating their current grade. The Selection Committee Chair had a detailed discussion with the area coordinator for Chitwan, and based on his recommendations, the committee decided to continue to support these students for another year. Both these students are from a poor as well as difficult (from the view point of enabling academic excellence) environment.  However, the area coordinator and NCEF volunteers assured us that they will do their best to help the two students perform better this year.
3. To overcome the delay in making renewal decisions, often due to late arrival of mark sheets, this year we made provisional decisions that were later confirmed after mark sheets were received. This was done based on a recommendation by last year’s committee. We are happy to report that this experiment worked well—we received mark sheets in all cases, albeit after a waiting period of two to four weeks—and our provisional approvals ensured that students received the funds in a timely manner.