It is a 45-minute drive down a long dirt road from the highway to the village of Singraha in Kapilbastu near the Indian border. Villagers are mostly dalits and Muslims and there is only one school: the Chunda Kumari Primary School (pictured, right). It may not look like much but schools like this give hope for Nepal's future because it shows what can be done if villagers are allowed to run their schools themselves.

It has four small classrooms and a bathroom that no one uses. The teachers not only teach but also go house-to-house asking villagers to enrol children.

"Having the community involved means parents are involved with the school and they will look after its well being," says Yagya Bikram Shahi of the Community Owned Primary Education Program (COPE) of the UN, "many times the Maoists tried to close down schools but due to community pressure they have remained open."

Kapilbastu's teachers like this one at the COPE-supported Ram Janaki School (below) have also learnt a lot. They now want to send their students not just to school but are aiming at colleges when they graduate.

Uma Kant Mishra, Kapilbastu's DEO is full of praise for COPE. "They taught us that female teachers are probably better, showed us how to promote primary schools with local help," he says. In addition, because parents were part of the school management committee the school was forced to pay attention to quality.

Sugarta Nau whose daughter Anita studies in Chunda Kumari, says, "I have gained knowledge by being a part of the school management committee, I am not educated but I want my child to be able to read and write."

For a district where less than half the children are enrolled, less than a quarter of the teachers have any training and 80 percent of the education budget is spent just on teachers' salaries, COPE has brought drastic change. And no one knows this better than Bishnu Kala Panday, headmistress of Chunda Kumari. "Earlier girls were not allowed to go to school," she recalls, "parents distrusted male teachers, we made the effort to go house-to-house asking people to enrol their children. They now trust us."

Still, it's an uphill battle in an area steeped in patriarchy. A girl is sent to school only up to the time she is married, and there are many child wives.

Bhagwat Dayal's daughter goes to Chunda Kumari, but she tells us: "She will study till class five and that's all, after that she will go to her husband's house. I don't think I would want my daughter-in-law to study once she comes here either." On the other hand, a few years ago parents here wouldn't even be sending their daughters to school in the first place.

The UN pays 94 percent of the funds for schools and the VDCs provide the rest. Buoyed by the success, the UN is launching COPE 2 to use the same model for municipality and higher secondary schools. The project has set up 120 schools in 83 VDCs in six districts and now wants to replicate the model elsewhere.