Uttam Sanjel, 35, runs over a dozen schools across Nepal that provide quality education to children of underprivileged families at an affordable monthly fee of Rs 100. Schools opened and managed by him are already educating over 18,000 children across the country.
Thirty six-year-old friend of rural peasants Hari Lal Acharya runs an agriculture cooperative in Parsa that offers collateral-free credit to farmers, freeing them from the burden of high-interest loans that push them deeper into the vicious circle of poverty. Several hundred families have benefited from the cooperative and their lives have changed dramatically.
Jiban Baral, 26, gave up politics as it offered him nothing but hopelessness and went on to establish his own organization--Alternative--that works in areas like youth entrepreneurship, rural development, environment protection and education. The US-based Clinton Global Initiative University (CGIU) awarded Baral for his contributions to poverty alleviation.
And there are interesting groups of young friends who are collectively doing commendable jobs to also make a difference, to leave their mark. A group of young working professionals aged 25-39 has taken leave from their jobs to plant trees in their hometown, Banepa. The eight are working to create a green belt along the sidewalks of a two-kilometer stretch of the highway passing through the town. Rashil Palanchoke, the inspiring leader of the group, had taken up a similar project to plant 500 trees in Mata Tirtha ten years ago with the help of school and street children.
These are just a few samples. Youths are increasingly taking up challenges in different sectors, whether it´s politics or business or social entrepreneurship, and pursuing them passionately and with success. To call for assistance to these youths from the state or elsewhere would only be an insult to their indomitable spirit. We just want to congratulate them and tell them that more and more youths will follow their footsteps, creating the critical mass necessary for social change, because the spirit of youth can be a very, very contagious thing.
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