Apply to be a 2013-2014 Kopila Fellow!

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that the 2013-2014 Kopila Fellows application cycle is open! To learn more, check out our Kopila Fellows page. Please share this announcement with friends who you think may be great candidates!

Our house on Holi!

Our house on Holi! My favorite picture in a while :)

© 2013 photo by Kopila English Teaching Fellow Benjamin Heiber

Happy 13th Birthday Anjali!

Happy 13th Birthday Anjali!
In her own words:

The birthday girl!

photo: © 2013 Steve Doyne

Guest Post from our Fellow Kelly: Teacher Trainings at Kopila

Hello all! My name is Kelly and I am one of the current Fellows volunteering at Kopila Valley. Part of my role here is to work with and support our nursery through second grade teachers. One of the goals of the fellowship program is to expose our staff to new and interactive teaching techniques and ideas to ensure that our students are getting a full and rich education. We are working to incorporate the most effective methods from both the Nepali and American education systems.

With the idea that we are all continual learners, Mallory (Early Childhood Development Fellow) and I have embarked on creating a series of teacher trainings. Our goals are to focus on critical thinking and creativity in the classroom. To do this we focused on the basics. Specifically on things we believed we would love to see more of in the Kopila classrooms. 

The first three courses we have planned are:

1. Interactive Story Reading
2. Fun with Math
3. Teaching English Sentence Structure

This past week we hosted our first training, Interactive Story Reading. It was so much fun! The teachers pretended they were their own students and listened to a story. We talked about what makes a good story teller. And at the end of the session every teacher walked away with a fully planned story and lesson to do with their class. This week Mallory and I are going to observe the teachers read their stories to their classes and give them feedback. I can’t wait to see how they do!

Kelly Skillingstead

P.S. We were able to do an observation of Kalpana reading Are You My Mother? to her class and she was AMAZING!! She had her students engaged and was asking lots of questions (both Nepali and English). She was connecting the story to what the kids knew about animals and their babies and how the little bird felt in the story and I couldn't stop smiling the whole time. Yay for awesome teachers!!

International Women's Day

It's International Women's Day!!!! Hip hip hooray (as the Kopila kids always love to shout.) Everyone is tweeting and facebooking up a storm and I couldn't help but join the party. 

Power to women everywhere. We have some so far!!! I'm so excited for the future of my little girls and boys and I am 100% convinced that we are well on our way to a more equal and prosperous world.

We're celebrating TODAY with the launch of our new Women's Center!  Our dream is to create income generation and empowerment for women in need in our community. 

Join us by making a donation to support a woman or girl in Nepal!