The state schools in Nepal are in a desolate state.  Classes with over 40 children are the norm, and school supplies and educational material are always scarce.  The annual primary school leaving qualifications shows how inadequate  the school system is: more than half of the schoolchildren in public schools fail the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examinations at the end of the tenth school year.  And the reform of the educational system has been slow.


In the Sertshang Orphanage Home great emphasis is placed on the children having a good education.  Thanks to the generous support of the Eugen and Elisabeth Schellenberg Foundation in Frauenfeld (Switzerland), the education of the children is being continuously improved.  Since the end of 2021, they are beeing taught at the home's own Bodhisattva School, together with around 200 other children and young people from the neighborhood.  After obtaining their School Leaving Certificate, the young people attend an appropriate college or undertake an apprenticeship that is in keeping with their abilities, skills and interests.  A few of them enter directly into professional life.  They are all supported until such time as they are able to live independent lives.  The scholastic program in the children's home is supplemented by regular lessons in the subjects dance, music and yoga, taught by external teachers.


The orphanage is also home to a café, in which the older children can gain important working experience in a professional setting during various short-term assignments in the kitchen and in service. 


The education

Since its establishment in 2002, the Sertshang Orphanage has taken in some 99 children.  Currently 52 children and young people between the age of five and twenty years old live in the home.  Almost half of them are already attending college.  Another eight are studying abroad.  These young students continue to be supported, and spend their holidays in the orphanage.  Three of the young people have decided to live as monks.  They are educated in the same monastic school that Chogyal Rinpoche attended in the northern Indian town of Kalimpong.  They, too, have regular contact with the orphanage and come to Kathmandu during their holidays. 


The oldest of them, who was the first to complete her vocational training in 2016 and who is now a nurse, is also being supported in her further educational goal to become a midwife.  However, she no longer lives in the home.


The children