2022 Newsletter – Summer

HIMANCHAL EDUCATION FOUNDATION JULY 2022 NEWSLETTER The medical clinic that HEF helped initiate under Dr. Debra Stoner’s guidance in 1998, is a community based clinic and thus not government supported. The clinic was expanded 2 years ago with a $11,000 grant from the Huguenin Rallapalli Foundation in California. It has been extremely difficult to get doctors to stay more than 3-4 months at the clinic. They do not care for the rural setting and seek opportunities that pay more. Current salary is $850/mon. Mahabir suggested if funds could be secured they would be able to hire a general practitioner for...

Ajay Rai (board member)visit to Nepal

The NIC – National Innovation Center,  located inside the Tribhuvan University, the largest and the oldest University in Kathmandu Nepal, is a very interesting place. The University area was so huge that it took me a while following all the NIC signs eventually leading me to the center. I am very grateful for the opportunity I had visiting the center and receiving a tour from Mahabir. I found the center to be very different from the traditional innovation centers one would imagine. There were not many hard rules one had to follow while in there, nor I saw a definite...

Mahabir Pun honored with ‘Gandaki Ratna Award’

KATHMANDU, Feb 2022. The cabinet of the Gandaki Province Government elected to award Dr. Mahabir Pun, Chairperson of the National Innovation Center, with ‘Gandaki Ratna Award’ for his contribution to the development of science and technology in Nepal. The award is the largest and most important in the province. The award was presented to Dr. Pun during a special function on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the provincial government, said Kumar Khadka, Spokesperson of Gandaki Province government. Pun has contributed immensely for the expansion of wireless internet service in rural areas of the country. Source: National News Agency...

2021 Newsletter

It has been 18 months since the lockdown was imposed on March 24, 2020 in Nepal. Therefore, everything is moving very slowly as in the rest of the world. I would like to share some news and updates of the activities during this period in Nangi village and surroundings. Covid-19 and Nangi village: Nangi and surrounding villages were not affected much by Covid-19 because there were travel restriction for travel from one village to another. Most of the villagers worked on the farms and did not go outside the villages. Teaching during the pandemic: All the schools were closed in...

2020 Newsletter

I would like to share some updates of the activities from Nangi village, Nepal. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic we have not been able to do as much as we wanted to do. Nearly all the schools in the cities and mountains of Nepal were closed by the government March 24, 2020. However, we opened the Himanchal High School from July 1 and started teaching because there were no Covid cases in the whole region. One teacher did get infected with Covid because he travelled out of town for some work but has totally recovered. Nangi received support from the...