Women Sharing Health Knowledge

We are addressing the problem of young women in rural Nepal experiencing under-education and unemployment, giving them a perspective of self-employment in their community as Basic Health Counsellors. At the same time, they will be increasing the availability of primary healthcare in rural areas. After finishing secondary school, the female participants receive a one-year training in basic medicine, hygiene, social work, women's rights and much more. Special attention is paid to train them on sharing their newly acquired knowledge in the form of audiovisual media with the people of Nepal. Increased access to further education will increase job perspectives and security for women, while empowering them to be self-sustained and becoming role models themselves for other women.

Nepal is one of the least developed countries in Asia with 80.3% of the 28.1 million population living in rural areas, 25% of the population below the national poverty line. Poor access to healthcare and related education still lead to unnecessary diseases and deaths. 40% of women marry at below 18 years of age, giving birth early. (UN 2020) 

Female participation is decreasing especially in higher education, due to inequal access and its lack of availability in rural areas. Girls rely on families’ decision regarding their education and career choices and their financial abilities. Parents are usually hesitant to invest in girls’ education. (UN 2018)

Girls in Nepal report their preferred study-courses to be health assistant/nursing, and medical doctor as one of their preferred jobs. They see paid employment as a security measure against an unknown future and want to work for independence from their in-laws/husband. (UN 2015)

Yet most of them don't continue further education due to deeply rooted gender stereotypes and disparities in a patriarchic society. This results in a lack of employment options for women, leading to either full-time householding or simple work, gaining only $35/month on average (UN 2015).

Offering a practical 1-year "Basic Health Counsellor" training to female secondary school graduates in rural Nepal gives them the opportunity to study in a safe environment close to their homes. Learning from Nepalese and international experts in the field about medicine, hygiene, social work, women’s health and rights. As well as attaining skills in general business, communication and using computers, they will be empowered to work self-sustained in their own communities.  

In particular they will be enabled to provide primary healthcare in person to people in their villages to pass on their attained knowledge to communities all over Nepal. They will learn how to create simple educational videos which they will disseminate through familiar, widely available and commonly used channels like Social Media and TV. These short videos will aim at raising awareness about hygiene, healthy living and gender equality. 

We will focus on young women leaving secondary school, living in rural areas, with restricted access to further education as explained above. We hired two young Nepali women as education coordinators who develop the curriculum together with our European expert team. Our Basic Health Counsellor program will offer young Nepalese women like them an alternative to young marriage and householding. After finishing our practical training, they will be working as trainers and counsellors in schools and local families, sharing their health knowledge with the local population. Additionally, they will be using audiovisual media, in which they pass on their newly acquired knowledge via social media to the broader population, thus adding value to many people’s lives.

We've been conducting projects in Nepal for over 20 years and have been cooperating with local schools. We've gotten to know the people and culture in person and through interviews/studies. We learnt about the people’s needs and possibilities/restrictions and gained valuable insight in how to support them. Our latest project was to train women in sewing/tailoring, enabling them to become self-employed after years of (financial) dependency on their husbands. The first collection of yoga-related products have already been sold in Germany. 

With our Basic Health Counsellor training, we will increase the number of young women in rural Nepal participating in further education. The training including basic computer knowledge, media training and presentation skills, gives them access to new job perspectives. This can encourage them to consider medical studies at a university due to an increased understanding and interest in medical topics and new self-confidence that they can actually succeed in studying. This way our course serves as a stepping stone for them. After developing the educational program together with Nepali women, we will improve the girl students’ continued learning journey.

The education system in Nepal is quite complex. In terms of post-secondary studies, there are vocational training institutions in the cities as well as universities in some major cities. Educational offers in rural areas are rarely available, especially not in terms of medical/ female-focused topics (according  to own local research). The content of our training is oriented towards existing vocational trainings in nursing, community health or social mobilization. We are adding components from manual therapy, business studies, environmental studies, human rights, plus basic IT-/presentation-/communication-skills. Concentrating on young women in rural areas as a target group, further increases the benefit of the training since its content can be condensed precisely to their needs rather than covering a time-consuming amount of redundant theory. Instead, the curriculum’s intended emphasis is to be practically applicable in future employment. 

We are acutely aware of the needs and possibilities of the women in Nepal through involving the eventual target group during the preparation and setup of our Nepali Education Coordinators and their direct contact to local young women. In the future, we hope to offer certificates from accredited institutions partnering with us for this education program. 

For the purpose of enabling young women to pass on their knowledge on important health topics, we rely on existing technology to make it easily accessible to the broader population of Nepal, especially in rural areas. Therefore, we have decided to use Facebook and YouTube as our main platforms to share the information. Facebook has 10 million users in Nepal (DataReportal2020), that’s more than one third of the population; YouTube had 6.4 million registered users in 2017.  

The participants of our Basic Health Counsellor training will acquire health-related fundamental knowledge as well as basic IT, presentation and communication skills. They will create audiovisual media to share their knowledge with the wider population via the channels mentioned above. Social media platforms are easy to understand and to use, besides the fact that a big share of Nepalese are using it on a daily basis. The videos will be short and precise, clearly focused on the needs of the target group regarding language, style, culture. An example could be an educational video about nutrition, explaining which local herbs should be included in the diet and how these can help against common diseases. The students will be able to share the videos on a specific Facebook page as well as in several groups and on their own timelines. Cooperation with schools and further public institutions will enable the content to be shared again by them and in other media like on local TV stations. 

Nepalese people are very active on Facebook, sharing pictures from their lives and families, lots of funny videos “Nepali style” or TicToc compilations. Also, the more educated Nepalese are sharing news from their region from online newspapers and are publicly discussing politics. Especially during the current Covid-19 lockdowns, there has also been a strong solidarity between the people, sharing information about test-centers, food distribution, or simply asking for help and donations in order to save people from starving. The Kathmandu Post confirmed our assumptions in a recent article, mentioning a Facebook group (which was supposed to coordinate activities of Nepali youth) having amassed 190,000 followers within a week.

72% of the Nepalese population owns a mobile phone and sim card. 52% of these devices are smartphones. There are 42.9 million mobile connections and 10.2 million internet users in Nepal. Facebook has 10 million users in that country, that’s more than one third of the population.  (DataReportal2020)

According to UN's "Covid-19 Preparedness and Response Plan", the media will be mobilized to disseminate education related messages and content. Teachers will be encouraged to use distance teaching materials and also raise awareness about COVID-19 transmission and prevention methods. This shows that Nepal itself is preparing to share more health-related information via previously uncommon channels and we can be a key guide how to do so through grassroots efforts.

For women to contribute to the healthy development of their country, their rights and opportunities must be equal. Young Nepali women should have the conditions to freely and independently choose their way of life. For that to happen, they need to develop self-confidence, to consider themselves as being an important part of society and able to contribute. Role models can inspire them to follow a new track beyond early marriage and a life of housekeeping (UN 2020). For becoming a role model, conditions need to be created such as job-opportunities or self-employment, which allows women to become independent from their families. However, if no further education is available for them, they will hardly get such an opportunity.

Therefore, our "Basic Health Counsellor" training for young women in rural Nepal aims to contribute to a sustainable change that benefits the larger population. Sharing their newly-acquired knowledge is a crucial part of our program. To inspire and help others, widely available social media platforms are employed as distribution channels for topics like hygiene, healthy living, preventing diseases, gender-equality and much more. This knowledge will be transferred to the Nepalese population through engaging videos, which the young women learn to create. This supports even remote communities where the people know little about preventive health or menstrual hygiene for example.

Besides directly starting to share their knowledge online, the graduates of our program will afterwards be able to work in their villages as trainers in schools and as counsellors for families and individuals. Enhancing access to basic health care in their communities and increasing the overall health standard of the population. 

In conclusion, women will gain self-confidence and will be put in a position to have their voices heard, to contribute to important topics and gain an equal share of influence in the development of the country. As a long-term impact, women will become more respected members in society; in the long-term outcome, gender-disparities will decrease.

With our successful prototype “Sewing project”, we have helped 14 women gain a quality education and financial independence. The indirect reach was about 35 additional people in their direct families, not yet including the wider family network that was positively influenced. 

The Basic Health Counsellor training will start its first year of in-person training with 30 young women. Increasing the amount of classes and participants each year, installing further training centers bit by bit throughout Nepal. The first round of participants will directly influence their surrounding communities with about 5,000 inhabitants by trainings and counselling. 

Sharing audiovisual media through social media could indirectly reach up to 10 million Nepalese with a Facebook account of whom particularly the rural population up to 7.5 million could benefit. We assume we will reach 1% of them (meaning 100,000 users) within the first year.

In the coming year, we will start our face-to-face Basic Health Counsellor training in our facilities with 30 young women in the first round of training. Within that year, they will already have gained the skills to influence their direct communities (up to 5,000 people) and further disseminate their knowledge through videos on social media targeting up to 10 milllion Nepalese (DataReportal2020). Building an online community takes some time, we expect to reach around 100,000 people in the first step, which equals 1% of the population using Facebook. 

While cooperating with other NGOs, education providers and also governmental institutions, the spread of knowledge will expand step by step. We expect that in-person trainings will increase year by year through cooperation with other institutions in other rural areas. They can benefit from our successful pilot and easily adapt the concept, while we will provide a project coordinator from our side, ensuring that the concept is successfully and adequately transferred. 

In the process of developing the program further, especially offering online training in the upcoming years, more and more multipliers of important topics are to be trained, quickly increasing the direct reach of help within the communities. 

The major barrier for us currently is the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent hard lockdown in all of Nepal. Therefore, in-person training is not yet possible and project visits from our NGO are unforeseeable for the upcoming future. Schools are still closed and the final school-leaving-examination is still to take place (which is a requirement to take part in our program). Most of the preparation currently has to be done remotely and online.  

As the Covid-19 crisis turns into a supply crisis with people starving and many having no income and therefore no security, the political system may become destabilized. Future riots are more likely. Furthermore, we must not forget that Nepal is a developing country and what we may take for granted in the West, is not always available or realistic in Nepal. 

In case the lockdown situation in Nepal does not change in the upcoming months, we plan to create an online learning platform where the courses will be available to access on mobile phones. The benefit of such a platform would be that even more than the 30 young  women initially planned for could gain access to the program. Yet, the financing of this kind of platform would require funding from external partners, such as foundations, public financing or private persons wanting to donate to this cause. 

We would also ease the requirement of students needing to complete the school-leaving-exam before attending so that the students can start to learn even if school-leaving-examination has not yet taken place. This would bring some benefit to the situation in which Nepali people can hardly do anything.

For the overall situation we must continue to observe carefully. We are in close contact to the two Education Coordinators and the project manager on-site. This ensures that we can adapt our program to the volatile situation according to the needs of the Nepali population.

The core team working on this project is 5 members, with outstanding support from all other NGO members and staff. In total, there are more than 20 highly motivated voluntary staff of an interdisciplinary team in our German NGO Long Yang e.V. plus another 10 volunteers of our partner organization Akasha Academy NGO.

We have 2 paid part-time staff (Nepali Education Managers) and 1 paid Project Manager from our partner-NGO in Nepal.

We are a highly motivated, interdisciplinary team with expert-knowledge and experience in all relevant topics we intend to train; including medicine, business, engineering, computer science & -security, finance & controlling, politics, social mobilization, product management, project management, R&D, urban development, fundraising, holistic healing, psychology, manual therapy, etc.

All members have close ties to Nepal. A common vision and shared values connect us strongly as a team, which drive us to spend most of our free time working on our projects - on a voluntary basis. This becomes visible in feedback from experts of similar areas who were surprised of how professional and successful we have been working on our projects – despite “only” being volunteers. 

The Long Yang e.V. has over 20 years of experience engaging in dynamic, impactful projects between Nepal and Germany and in responsible grant usage. In these years, we built up a good network and strong ties with the locals. The needs and challenges in Nepal and how to deal with them are well known. To realize our projects, it is most important to us to work at eye-level with our Nepalese partners, seeing it as an opportunity to learn and benefit on both sides. 

1. Akasha Academy NGO:
   The longstanding cooperation partner in Nepal is conducting the administrative work in the country in close collaboration with the Long Yang e.V. in Germany.
   www.akasha-academy.org
   
   
2. Nepal Medical Students' Society (NMSS):
   The members of NMSS are supporting us regarding the development of the curriculum. They also agreed to send student doctors to teach about specific medical topics. Together we have been organizing the funding and distribution of protective personal equipment to medical staff during ongoing Covid-19 pandemic in Nepal. 
   www.nmss.org.np
   
   
3. German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ, Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung):
   Main funding for the training portion of the project.

Young female secondary school graduates in rural Nepal can participate in a 1-year practical Basic Health Counsellor training, free of charge or for a little fee depending on their financial capacity. Creating educational videos of their newly acquired health knowledge and sharing them on social media with the people of Nepal is a prerequisite in their curriculum.  

By sharing their knowledge in this way, it will also bring benefit to people all over Nepal. In addition to bringing necessary attention to important health-related topics, it also reflects the potential of women contributing to the development of the country. This may draw more attention to the topic and attract foreign and local donors to support, therefore motivating local decision makers to also bring more focus on women’s education. 

After graduation the participants can practically apply their knowledge as trainers in many ways. Gaining income through offering school trainings or working as counsellors in their village. They can help people with primary healthcare, can inform them about hygiene in their homes and daily lives and show them ways to lead a more healthy lifestyle, thus preventing diseases. These consultancies can be charged depending on the financial abilities of the people, up to the point of having a self-sustaining income.

All our projects have so far been financed by donations and grants. The major part of our Basic Health Counsellor training is being financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation. Additional funding for the technological expansion of the project has yet to be granted; we look forward to working with MIT solve members to bridge this gap. 

Hopefully, local decision makers will acknowledge the Basic Health Counsellors' value in their communities, paying them a monthly income for their commitment (similar to female community health volunteers,FCHV). Once the Nepali government's health-officials acknowledge the program's value, we hope their support will help us physically expand and establish the service to other regions.

Participants of the program will pay a small fee based on their financial capacity. We plan to search for sponsors to cover tuition fees. Once the training program is consolidated, we may invite others to join for specific class topics for a fee. Once we can set up an online learning-platform, we can offer subscriptions to new content. After graduation, the women who were able to establish a stable income are invited to “give back” to the program what they can afford in order to help make the course available to other candidates who are not able to pay for the program themselves. 

We are also looking into opportunities to create a Social Business out of one of our projects in order to re-finance ourselves and invest in our larger vision.

MIT Solve understands that one of the largest barriers for NGOs is funding. Through the Solve program we hope to overcome this barrier to continue to support and develop women's health education programs in Nepal through innovative and culturally centered initiatives.

To do so, we need to invest in the technological expansion of our project to reach more people and create a larger impact. Experts in online learning-platforms can support us with setting up our online learning-platform, which will be necessary during Covid-19 and as an alternative to in-person trainings for broader reach of the target group.

We would appreciate support regarding the setup of an online learning-platform in order to scale the education program in the future more easily and to reach further rural areas, where in-person training may not be feasible. 

We appreciate the MIT Solve network for its opportunities for grants and its media exposure. The network would aid in finding possibilities of cooperation and like-minded people who want to support our cause. 

We are not very experienced in monitoring and evaluating impacts of such complex projects yet, and could need help with setting this up. 

Besides, we have more projects planned which go hand in hand with our current project and which are all following the same vision. Long-term cooperation and generous sponsors who share the same values would be highly appreciated. 

In the future, we could need support in setting up a social business in order to re-finance our activities in Nepal.

We would be happy about cooperating with the following organizations regarding their similar goals and areas of focus as our NGO:

• Atlassian Foundation International: education for the world’s poorest people
• AutoCognita: education via mobile phones
• Care 2 Communities: best practices for community based primary healthcare
• EPAM: investments in educational programs
• EY: help ensure that young and underserved groups are prepared for the working world of the future
• Firefly Innovations at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy: transforming communities and solving public health challenges
• GM: Community Development (Vocational Training)
• Intuitive Foundation: promoting health and advancing education, for example healthcare training programs
• Teach For All: concept in creating leaders
• Vodafone Americas Foundation: empowering women and girls through technology

As these 2 organizations are also located in the same city as our NGO, a direct exchange may be interesting:

• BMW Foundation: venture philantrophy, supporting Responsible Leaders solving challenges in a larger context
• Munich Re: a joint workshop on developing the project with the company’s knowledge on risk-/project-/health management might be an idea

The Basic Health Counsellor training for female secondary school graduates in rural Nepal enables them to continue education despite challenging circumstances. Through this program young women are empowered to become self-responsible for their future lives, rather than dependence on their husbands. By using smartphones and computers to create audiovisual media, they get more used to technology, which offers them better job perspectives while acting as role models for women in other rural areas of Nepal. Participants will also share their newly acquired health-knowledge on social media with the broader Nepali population. Our project is focusing on how to innovatively use existing technology, while Nepal does not have the prerequisites to implement advanced solutions. Imagine, with funding from the Vodafone Americas Foundation, an online-learning platform could be set up in order to reach many more girls in Nepal with our training content. This creates more multipliers for basic health topics, thus improving the health standard in the whole country. The more girls learn how much of a positive impact they can have on society, the more they will be respected, transforming women's status and the more they can become impactful changemakers for a better future. 

Nepal is one of the least developed countries in Asia with women still marginalized. Girls especially in rural areas marry and give birth at a young age, rarely having an opportunity to continue higher education – besides lacking financial capacity and their families rarely support girls’ education. With our Basic Health Counsellor training for female secondary school graduates in rural Nepal, we offer an education program to this target group. We prepare them in a practical one-year training to become self-sustained and independent, while acting as role models for other girls to follow their path. After graduation, they can share and apply their knowledge hands-on in their communities as trainers and counsellors. The program is not intended to just acquire knowledge - the participants shall become multipliers and to create a positive impact on as many people as possible. Improving their digital literacy by training them on computers, their job perspectives are also improved. They learn how to create target-group focused videos about their newly acquired health-knowledge which also serve as an inspiration to other women. They share them on social media in order to reach a broader audience in Nepal. With a funding from GM, we would be able to set up an additional online-learning platform to reach many more girls in Nepal with our training content.