Surya Nepal has been supporting educational institutions to enhance the quality of primary education for deprived members of the society. In achieving this objective, Surya Nepal has been organizing educational awareness campaigns, providing educational materials support, constructing school infrastructure and facilities, providing scholarship and excellence awards and supplying library, games and computers to the schools.
This has also been a major area of concern for Surya Nepal to support Self- help Groups (SHGs) of poor women and farmers, to create sustainable income-generating opportunities at the local level by developing market needs-based small and micro enterprises. The focus on providing financial and technical support to enable small and micro enterprises to be run by SHG’s themselves at individual and/or group level.
SNPL has been empowering needy women through vocational trainings as per the local market needs such as garments sewing, weaving, agarbatti, bindiya and candle-making, local handicrafts, dairy products etc.
Extensive training in sewing is provided for 120 women annually.
Surya Nepal has been credited with having played a major role towards creating rural prosperity by helping to enhance agriculture and livestock productivity for sustainable livelihoods. To achieve this objective, we have been providing training on latest agriculture technology, vegetable farming, livestock rearing, poultry farming, kitchen gardening etc.
According to the farmers, after cultivation of leaf tobacco, they have found a substantial improvement in their livelihoods in comparison to their regular traditional crop farming. Quality vegetable seeds to about 2,000 poor tobacco farmers were distributed for income-generation.
Moreover in the area of women empowerment, as part of its corporate social responsibility programs, Surya Nepal has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Chamber of Industries Morang (CIM) for imparting sewing training to underprivileged women from the nearby locations. With an objective of developing human resources and generating employment in the region, Surya Nepal is providing financial and technical support to the programme.
While its first batch of training commenced on 20th January, 2005 in Tankiniswari with 30 different hi-tech Japanese machines, 30 trainees from nearby locations, who had successfully passed the dexterity and written test, enthusiastically attended the training for a period of three months.
While the first batch of training was competed, and 30 skilled workers were exposed to the industry, the importance of the training was even more appreciated by the local entities. VDCs, Women Development Cells, and the community as a whole provided a lot of moral support.
While asked about the training, 30- year-old Ms. Anita Bista, a widow from the Tanki-3, said “this training has added confidence to my life and I feel a great support for my sustainability”. Even Mr. Eak Bahadur Pariyar, instructor and employee of Surya Nepal, who was given specialized garments training by European consultants, feels privileged to participate in such an initiative. He says “I feel proud to add skills to these hands and I find my teaching successful while I observe the increasing confidence in them with the increasing speed of their machines with desired quality output”.
With a plan of three batches a year, the training is being continued with quality and other relevant topics being added to the curriculum.
In addition to continuing the training, Surya Nepal and CIM share the vision of extending this programme to increase its reach and making it self-sustained.
Besides this training, as a part of our social commitment, we are also giving high priority to women from poor socio-economic background for work in our garments factory as operators.
