On 25th July, AFPN visited Ullens School as a part of traveling educational exhibition. Most of the students there knew about Anne Frank. Principal, Mr. Medin Lamichanne told us that grade 7 students there read Anne Frank's book "The Diary of a Young Girl" as a part of their curriculum. It could be the only other school besides Rato Bangala School that has Anne's book in its school curriculum; it is definitely a matter of research. 

The next day, on the 26th we visited Rupak Memorial International HS School. We had few troubles setting things up, and we had to cut the presentation short because of scheduled load shedding, but everything else was fine. We received a lot of thoughtful questions from the students even after the program was over. 

Please have a look at some pictures from these school visits:

Come back for more updates...

AFPN visited SOS Herman Gmeiner School and Little Flower School in Chitwan. We had trouble using the power points, so, we improvised our introductory presentation a little bit. We used black boards and the posters to explain concepts and terms. It was a different experience because it allowed us to interact with students even more. We were extremely glad that students asked thought provoking questions and their answers to the questions in their survey were very reflective. We would like to thank the school administration in both these schools for welcoming us even in a very short notice.

Please have a look at the pictures from Chitwan:

Please check back for more updates in future...

AFPN visited 4 different schools here in Pokhara (SOS Herman Gmeiner School Pokhara, Tops Higher Secondary Boarding School, Novel Academy and Amar Singh Higher Secondary School) in the span of two days. It was mostly school administrations' help in setting things up, and the inquisitiveness students demonstrated that made all of these visits really effective. We are hoping to start school visits in Chitwan in next couple of days.

Please find pictures from our school visits in Pokhara:

Today AFPN visited Valley View English School in Mid-Baneshwor as a part of traveling educational exhibition. The program reached out to more than 300 students during the school assembly and the discussion session. We received from the school administration, mostly from Mr. Ram Prasad Dhungana, the co-ordinator of the school. 

Students, mostly 10th graders were very interested in the presentation. We received a lot of thoughtful answers for the subjective questions of the survey. There were quite a few students who approached us and asked reflective questions after the program. One student asked if we had considered teaching about the Nepalese civil war, which would be much easier to relate to, than the Second World War. We answered that it would be very hard to remain neutral on the issues of the war that we have experienced ourselves, and the last thing we would want the student group to is be divided based on political ideologies. But we do want students to think about various wars and reflect on those wars so that we can infer pressing lesson from them. There were others who wanted to know how the project started and why. We discussed on these questions briefly and directed them to our website: annefranknepal.org for further information. 

Overall, the program ran very smoothly and the response we received from students were really reflective. Thanks to Nicholas Kang, Sabi Gurung and Subhash Ghimire for their effort. It was Nicholas' first school visit after coming to Nepal from Canada to help us with the project. We all are now looking forward to meeting more students from other institutions in the future. 




 Here are few pictures from the project today:

Anne Frank Project Nepal off to a great start

After two weeks of preparation, Anne Frank Project Nepal 2012 has finally started reaching out to students and teaching them about the Holocaust and the Second World War through the story of Anne Frank. On July 2, we met more than 200 students in Kathmandu Valley Higher Secondary School in Chakrapath, Kathmandu. One of the surprising things about this visit was that unlike most of the students we interacted with last year, few students from this institution knew who Anne Frank is. Most of them did not know about the Holocaust, which was not too surprising. But, we are always amazed to see students being so inquisitive about the topics we discuss, and the students here were no different. 

We started off by setting up our banners that portray life during Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, the second world war, and specially life of Anne Frank. The school administration was kind enough to let all the students from grade eight to ten visit those posters during their busy class schedule and also be a part of the discussion session that took place after the poster presentation session. We received a lot of questions from the students about the posters and the materials presented in them, a clear indication that students had started thinking about the topics, a very good start. 

We then entered a pretty humid room for the rest of the program. The windows were shut and curtains were up to make it dark for the projector display to be clearer. A room with not enough air flow in a 32 degree C temperature means a lot of sweat and exasperation. Yet, most of the students were patient enough to stay there for around 2.5 hours. We started off by introducing us (Subhash Ghimire, Sabi Gurung and me myself), and the project. We then showed them the power points for around 20 minutes to give them an idea about the topics that the video we were going to show them later will refer to. It was particularly difficult to talk about race, so we took it slow and provided ample opportunity for students to ask questions and discuss. We then showed them a video about life of Anne Frank, which was around half an hour. This was followed by a very quick written survey. With the help of the subjective questions in the survey, we tried to start a discussion. We asked them what they learned, why they should learn about world history, why do they think we were there with the project, what lessons can we draw from the topics, etc. 


The program ended with a very positive response from both the students and teachers. We have collected a lot of pledges to amend the social studies textbook to include the history of the Holocaust, and also the story of Anne Frank. We are hoping to visit 11 more schools here in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Gorkha and other districts, and meet more students. 


Here are few pictures from the program: