Keeping children in school is a major challenge for many families. The economic needs of the household often trump the desire parents have to send their kids to school. Girls in particular are held back because they are often charged with caring for younger siblings and otherwise helping their mothers. There is also less interest in investing in girls' education because after marriage they live with the husband's family and work for them. Scholarships are an essential tool for addressing these problems. ETC offers several scholarship programs that support hundreds of children, mostly girls:

• Community Scholarships: With community scholarships students are paired with sponsors in the United States and Europe. But, while the sponsorships do provide direct support for the student they also help finance school rehabilitation, teacher training and other activities in ETC's Education Program. Additionally, most of the students in this program are children of women involved in ETC's Women's Development Program; this makes the experiences of mothers and their children mutually reinforcing.
• Dalit Scholarships: Helping dalit women organize into women's groups is especially difficult, so ETC provides a scholarship for one daughter of each woman as an incentive for them to become involved. This strengthens the women's groups while increasing school enrolments from this marginalized community.
• Higher Education Scholarships: Through a rigorous selection process needy but excellent students are given the opportunity to continue their education for two years after successful completion of the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) exam.
• Vocational Training: For some students, additional vocational training in nursing, agricultural extension, and other technical fields is provided.
• Private Scholarships: This is the original sponsorship program created by Pamela Carson. Students are paired up with sponsors in the United States and Europe who finance their education as well as a variety of support services provided by ETC. Though no children have been added to the program since 1994, ETC will continue to support the remaining children until they finish their schooling.

ETC constantly reinforces the idea that the education of children goes hand in hand with the overall improvement of the community brought about by women's groups. By promoting inter-generational solidarity, ETC strives to ensure that the education of children benefits not just them as individuals but all of Nepali society and to help a new generation of community leaders to emerge.

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