When I Feel Happy, When I Feel Sad”

Student Voices on Well-being from a Reflective Placard Activity

A school in Gadhawa Municipality, Dang District, Lumbini Province  ·  Grades 8, 9 & 10  · 

28 student responses

3 grades (8, 9 & 10)

100% girl participants

2 well-being themes explored

Students’ own placards from the activity, written in Nepali under the prompts “when I feel happy” and “when I feel sad.”

Key messages at a glance

•   School is a source of joy. Friends, competitions, scouting, art and sports were the most common reasons students felt happy — the school is functioning as a safe and positive space.

•   Sadness clusters at home. Scolding, physical punishment and family quarrels were the single largest sources of sadness reported.

•   Girls carry a household-work burden. Being pulled into chores — and being stopped from studying, playing or going out because of them — recurred strongly across the girls’ responses.

•   Phones and social media cut both ways. Students linked happiness to connection and program participation, but some reported hurt from being scolded or insulted online.

•   A few responses need follow-up. Mentions of being beaten, kept out of school, and family illness or loss are child-protection signals that merit gentle, individual attention.

Indicative frequency from qualitative coding of 28 student responses (Grades 8–10).

1. Background and purpose

This report captures the voices of 28 students from Grades 8, 9 and 10 of a school in Gadhawa Municipality, Dang District, gathered during a session of Creating Possibilities Nepal’s (CP Nepal) We Create program. We Create runs structured sessions with adolescents to build confidence, self-expression and life skills, with a particular focus on empowering girls in rural communities.

The activity described here was a simple, safe expressive exercise: students were invited to write, on coloured placards, about moments when they felt happy and moments when they felt sad. The purpose was not to test the students but to open a window into their emotional world — what nourishes them, what weighs on them, and where adults around them might offer better support. Because the responses come directly from the children in their own words, they are a valuable qualitative record of adolescent well-being in this rural setting.

2. About the activity

•   Participants: 28 students of Grades 8, 9 and 10 (girl students).

•   Setting: A We Create session held at a school in Gadhawa Municipality, Dang.

•   Method: Each student wrote free-text responses on a placard under two prompts — “when I feel happy” and “when I feel sad.” Responses were written in Nepali and later translated and thematically coded.

•   Analysis: Responses were grouped into recurring themes and counted to show which experiences were mentioned most often. The frequencies are indicative, drawn from qualitative coding rather than a structured survey.

3. What we heard — thematic findings

3.1 Sources of happiness

Students most often connected happiness to relationships and to belonging — especially the everyday joy of being with friends. School emerged as the stage for most of these positive experiences. Recurring sources of happiness included:

•   Playing and spending time with friends, at school and in the neighborhood.

•   Taking part in school activities — scouting, hiking, sports, art and drawing, and various competitions. Several students proudly recalled coming first or performing well.

•   Going to a fair (mela), to the market, or on an outing with family.

•   Being praised, and being helped with studies or homework — often by their mother.

•   Receiving new clothes or small gifts, especially around festivals.

The thread running through these is recognition and inclusion: students felt happy when they were seen, appreciated, and allowed to participate.

3.2 Sources of sadness

Where happiness was tied to school and friends, sadness was concentrated at home. The most frequently mentioned causes were:

•   Being scolded or beaten by parents — the single most common source of sadness.

•   Being made to do household chores, and being stopped from studying, playing or going out because of them.

•   Not being allowed to go out, play, or attend a fair with friends.

•   Quarrels and conflict within the family.

•   Hurtful experiences online — being scolded or insulted over social media — and conflicts with friends.

•   Being unable to attend school on some days; a family member falling ill; or the loss of someone close.

Taken together, these responses show that the home environment — rather than school — is where most of these students experience emotional distress. That is an important and actionable finding: it points the way toward working with families and caregivers.

4. A gender lens: the household-chores burden on rural girls

Because the participants were girls, their responses offer a clear view of how domestic responsibility shapes a rural adolescent girl’s day. A striking number wrote not simply that they were unhappy, but that their unhappiness came from being pulled into chores at the expense of school, study, play and time with friends. For these girls, housework is not an occasional task but a recurring claim on the very hours that boys of the same age more often spend studying or playing.

This matters for education outcomes as well as well-being. When chores routinely displace homework and rest — and sometimes school attendance itself — they quietly widen the gap between what a girl is capable of and what she is able to achieve. Addressing the chores burden is therefore not only a fairness issue; it is one of the most direct ways to protect these girls’ learning and their childhood.

5. Digital life: connection and its risks

Digital life surfaced on both sides of the ledger. On the positive side, connection and participation — including taking part in We Create activities with friends — were sources of happiness, and the pull of the smartphone as a way to stay connected is clearly strong among this age group. On the negative side, at least one student described being scolded or insulted over social media, and the sting of that experience was significant enough to record as a source of sadness.

For adolescents in a rural setting who are newly gaining access to phones and online spaces, this points to a real need for digital-citizenship and online-safety conversations: how to handle conflict online, how to protect oneself from harassment, and how to keep screen use in healthy balance with study, sleep and offline relationships. This is a natural theme for a future We Create session.

6. Areas of concern and child protection

Most responses reflect ordinary ups and downs of adolescent life. A minority, however, should be read as protection signals rather than general well-being data:

•   Physical punishment. Several students reported being beaten by parents. Corporal punishment is both harmful and, in the school setting, prohibited under Nepali child-protection norms.

•   Children kept from school for work. A few students linked sadness to being unable to attend school because of household demands.

•   Family illness, loss and conflict. A small number wrote about a sick family member, a bereavement, or ongoing quarrels at home.

Recommended handling: where any placard can be traced to an individual child, the responsible teacher or CP Nepal facilitator should follow up gently and individually, in line with CP Nepal’s safeguarding and referral procedures — rather than the concern appearing only in this aggregate report. The activity itself should continue to be framed positively so that children feel safe expressing themselves

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7. Recommendations

•   Keep and expand expressive activities. This exercise worked — children opened up. Repeat it periodically and add drawing, storytelling, and role-play so students have regular, safe channels to express feelings.

•   Work with parents and caregivers. Since home is the main source of distress, run positive-parenting and non-violent-discipline sessions, and open a conversation about sharing household work more fairly between sons and daughters.

•   Protect girls’ time to study and play. Engage families on the burden of chores specifically, framing girls’ education and rest as a shared family investment.

•   Add a digital-citizenship module. Cover online safety, dealing with harassment, and balanced phone use within We Create.

•   Strengthen the safeguarding pathway. Ensure facilitators and teachers know how to respond to disclosures of violence, and have a clear, confidential referral route.

•   Grow the positives. Invest in the very things students named as joyful — sports, scouting, art, competitions and friendship-building — as low-cost, high-impact well-being boosters.

8. Conclusion

These 28 placards are small pieces of paper carrying a clear message. For the students of this school, happiness is made of friendship, play, recognition, and the chance to take part; sadness is made largely of what happens at home — scolding, punishment, conflict, and, for girls especially, the weight of household work that crowds out study and freedom. School is doing its job as a safe and joyful space. The opportunity now lies in extending that safety into the home, easing the load on girls, and equipping students to navigate an increasingly digital world.

By listening first — as this activity did — CP Nepal’s We Create program is doing exactly what adolescent empowerment requires: starting from the child’s own voice, and building support around what they actually feel and need.

The activity in their own hands

The placards below are the original responses written by students during the session. They are reproduced here as a record of the activity; names on the cards are not transcribed in this report to protect the students’ privacy.