Nepal Now: On the move
We're talking with the people migrating from, to, and within this Himalayan country located between China and India. You'll hear from a wide range of Nepali men and women who have chosen to leave the country for better work or education opportunities. Their stories will help you understand what drives people — in Nepal and worldwide — to mortgage their property or borrow huge sums of money to go abroad, often leaving their loved ones behind.
Despite many predictions, migration from Nepal has not slowed in recent years, except briefly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. About 1 million Nepalis leave every year to work at jobs outside the country. Tens of thousands go abroad to study. Far fewer return to Nepal to settle. The money ('remittances') that workers send home to their families accounts for 25% of the country's GDP, but migration impacts Nepal in many other ways. We'll be learning from migrants, experts and others about the many cultural, social, economic and political impacts of migration.
Your host is Marty Logan, a Canadian journalist who has lived in Nepal's capital Kathmandu off and on since 2005. Marty started the show in 2020 as Nepal Now.
Nepal Now: On the move
Mountain district goes global to discourage youth migration
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It’s amazing what you can find when curiosity is your guide.
I was on a reporting trip in Taplejung district in northeast Nepal, bordering Tibet and India. I had an extra day so I thought I’d look for a school that provides meals to its students. It’s a topic I’ve been following for the past couple of years. I asked a guy I met at the hotel if he knew of a school principal in town— it turned out that he was the head of the committee of a local school. He took me to see the noon meal being served, then gave me a tour of the entire school area.
I was shocked to see a new building that might have been imported from Europe. With a light-coloured exterior of sharp angles, inside it featured huge windows, tall ceilings, a super wide, wooden staircase, and — perhaps most pleasantly surprising to me — a coffee bar.
The astonishing looking building in Taplejung, on the grounds of Bhanu Jana Secondary School, is the IT Academy. It’s been running for the past couple of years and includes a studio, where we recorded this episode, with Head Teacher Kishor Kumar Rai. The main aim of the Academy is to train recent graduates with online skills so that they can work from Taplejung instead of joining the tens of thousands of young people migrating from Nepal every month. The IT Academy was built with support from the Human Practice Foundation, a non-profit from Denmark,
So far the Academy has graduated 61 young people. 14 of them are employed online as digital creators for companies in places including Denmark, Singapore and South Korea. Those are small numbers, I know, but you have to start somewhere and it does seem that the management team has a growth plan. By the way, the donor that Kishor Rai mentions is Mr Waldemar Schmidt. Learn more about the IT Academy in our conversation now.
Resources
IT Academy
Bhanu Jana Secondary School (Facebook)
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Music by audionautix.com.
Thank you to Himal Media in Patan Dhoka for the use of their studio.
