Born to a modest family on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Sanjel claims he was never good in studies when he was in school. Growing up, he wanted to be a Bollywood actor or a director. So he went to Bombay when he was 18. After seven years of struggles, he came back to Nepal. In the next ten years, he ended up being an education hero in Nepal.
Sanjel wants to make sure that everyone, especially the families of those who cannot afford, can provide good quality education to their children. “Nobody can un-afford a 100-Rupee education,” Sanjel says.
Sanjel got interested in providing education to children when he decided to start non-formal literary classes for street children with the support from Kathmandu Education Office. The overwhelming response of children caused him to do something substantial in the field of formal education, he says.
And thus was the start of his new journey.
There are two kinds of education provided by schools in Nepal, thus producing two kinds of citizens. The English-medium private schools provide education that is unaffordable to a larger population in the country. The public schools provide education that is good for nothing except paper certificates.
Sanjel says he wants to provide a middle way and bridge the gap.
“What we’re doing here is that we provide the same kind of education as private English medium schools do, but with minimal fees, so that everyone can afford good quality schooling,” Sanjel says. “Parents shouldn’t bear to pay 300 Rupees just for a character certificate that costs one Rupee,” he adds. Most of his schools and their premises are voluntarily donated by industrialists to farmers, expats and educationists.
Sanjel has been getting support from Nepal’s ever popular comedian duo Madan Krishna Shrestha and Hari Bansha Acharya (MaHa). Sanjel said that they almost worked on a movie but it did not work out because they did not have the technology to shoot the movie. The duo has been raising awareness and finances for Sanjel’s project.
“This is one of the best initiatives in Nepal I’ve seen so far. Uttam is doing the communities a great service. We’re his fans,” Acharya says. “The motive of the schools is very genuine and saintly: To provide good quality education, which is possible only with a lot of money, and to provide it to the lower strata of the society.”
The 35-year-old single man with “18,000 children” says that he is not satisfied with the kind of education he is providing his students. “This is just about certificates that I provide them. I don’t provide ANY substantially skilled or vocational training,” Sanjel says.
“I want to provide regional education to students, the kind where regional knowledge and expertise would go hand in hand with their academic proficiency,” the young educator says.
For Sanjel, if you enjoy what you do, that is the art of living. He plans to build four more schools within the remainder of this very year, and says that he wants to break world records in three categories within the next five years: The school with the highest number of students, the school with bamboo walls, and same-fee structure for students from kindergarten to college.
“For 18 years of education, a Nepali student in my schooling system will have to pay only 21,600 Nepali Rupees [US$288 at current rates],” the optimist said.
Some of his hardship stories include hiding inside a toilet for hours when he was unable to pay the contractors for the construction of a school.
“I wasn’t able to pay salary to the teachers for three straight months. It was always a tough one to come up with money to pay my staff,” says Sanjel who does not want the government to get involved in his project. “They are busy in their own works. The government isn’t stable, so it’s hard to work with them,” he opines.
In Nepal, it is not the best of ideas to work in groups. That is the reason why Sanjel runs his show solo. He concludes by saying that all the financial records and expenses of his school project are going to be put up in the website very soon. “We want to be transparent about our works,” he says.
In the meantime, there is one more proposal on Uttam Sanjel’s table for a new Samata “bamboo” school in a remote village of Nepal.
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