Government officials said the festival was organized to increase child enrollment in the Early Childhood Development Centers across the country.[break]
Drawing and storytelling competitions were the most popular among the participating children, said Rajya Laxmi Nakarmi, chief of the Childhood Development Division at DoE.
At the one-day festival held at the International Sports Council, organizers managed dozen of stalls and sports activities for children that would be useful for their learning experience.
Currently, 1.05 million children of the 5 and under age group are covered by the ECDC program in Nepal. This is 73.7 percent of the total number of children of the age group. The ECDCs are manned by 22,000 volunteers who get a nominal monthly salary of Rs 2,400.
As government support is negligible, most of these centers are being run through community support. MoE data shows there are 33,904 ECDCs in operation and 4,631 of them are run by non-governmental organizations.
DoE had arranged pick-up and drop-off for the children of ECDCs in Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur participating in the program, said DoE Director Tek Narayan Pandey.
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