Poonte wrote: "I am still not convinced which is the best appraoch. The ideal, of course, would be the "multi-pronged" appraoch, but who has the resources to do that?" The way I have thought about this issue for the purpose of making decisions is this: 1. If you want to do help in a way that makes you feel good but you don't really care much about getting a bigger bang for your bucks, then, pay for some child's education from Class 1 to Class 10. The time it takes to so that is: 10 years, a long time indeed to do follow-ups. Out of 100 children you or your group help that way, my sense is that maybe 5 to 10 of them will go on to complete SLC. The rest drop out for a variety of reasons in Nepal, (for which the government should be hammered for not doing its job of keeping kids in school . . . but the government never gets hammered for this glaring oversight.) BUT 2. If you want to help and deeply care about getting a bigger bang for your bucks, then, TRY putting your scarce resources on paying for professional-degree or short-term vocational education of smart but economically disadvantaged students of various traditionally underrepresented ethnic communities. True, finding such students takes time and effort. That's the downside. But such students do exist. And once you find them, then work out an arrangement to pay for their education or training, and you continue to provide job-related advice, mentoring. . . you open up networks and information channels to them . . . then you can just enjoy seeing their taking positive advantage of all those opportunities to better themselves to get jobs in the market . . . help their families, and eventually their communities and villages by pulling their siblings and cousins into the wider job market. This takes: Maybe two to three years, max. And maybe two-weeks to six-weeks, if you wish to subsidize trainings related to cooking, hair-dressing and so on for people to start their own businesses. Education for education's sake is USELESS in Nepal. Only a tiny elite can afford that -- and that's fine. BUT Education for jobs is what we need all across Nepal so that our most valuable resource -- that is, the people of Nepal -- can be productive to earn their own dal-bhat. After all, just being literate and educated never gave anyone any job anywhere! oohi ashu