Home: Suryavinayak, Bhaktapur, Bagmati

Education: B.E. (Civil Engineering), Khwopa College of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

“If I had gotten a chance to complete my studies, I would have become so much successful today,” I remember my mother saying this to me and my siblings. She had studied only till Grade 4 and dropped out of school. Not only her, most children her age discontinued their education due to various reasons. My mother owned a small shop and run the business as her source of income. She was discriminated in many ways. She was deprived of many opportunities just because she wasn’t educated. So she wanted us to study well. She wanted us to be financially independent even after marriage so that no one could discriminate against us.

I really wanted to do something to solve the problem of gender disparity in education. I always used to wonder that if I was not born in the capital city and my parents weren’t literate, I wouldn’t have gotten the chance to acquire good education. Especially in rural areas, I’ve seen that girls are always discriminated against boys or not even sent to schools. Even if they go to school, they drop out because of poverty and having to support families. So I had always wanted work in rural areas to encourage girls to study and TFN Fellowship is a perfect platform.

Pursuing my dreams of sharing knowledge and skills to the less privileged women, we had started providing Proudh Shikchya (adult education) in my community during the nighttime when our sisters and mothers would be free. The campaign was organized by Yuwa Club in collaboration of a public school. Most of the participants of the class were women who had never been to school. We taught them alphabets, words and numbers. We even taught them calculations. All these skills were helpful for them in their daily lives. They can now read and write simple sentences both in English and Nepali and keep financial records of their small-scale businesses. Seeing that my efforts were helpful for improving lives of so many women, I felt very happy. Since I could conduct the classes efficiently in those days, I’m hoping I’ll be able to continue providing adult education during my fellowship in my community as well.

Along with that, since I have finished Civil Engineering and have the knowledge and skills on the same, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to use whatever I’ve learned to contribute in the reconstruction of my community affected by the April 2015 earthquake.

After the fellowship, I want to do Master’s in Management and then continue serving in rural areas of Nepal as an engineer and educator.