“This year, we had a total of five schools participating in the Challenge from different parts of the country,” informs Rita Rajbhandary, the Communications Officer of British Council in Kathmandu. They were, namely, Pokhara Tourism and Training Centre, Balaju School of Engineering and Technology, Trade School Sunsari, Farwest School of Medicine, and Seti Mahakali Nursing Campus. The five institutions were chosen from over 50 applications received prior to the Challenge.
A team comprising five students and a faculty member from each participating institution was invited to come to Kathmandu to compete for the Rs. 100,000-award money reserved for the challenge winners. As per the rules of the Council, the students in the team had to be from ages 16 to 21.The five teams arrived in the Capital city on November 15.
“For the next two days, we had training sessions to prepare the teams for the final day of the competition,” says Rajbhandary and elaborates, “For instance, we had project proposal writing trainings with facilitators.”
The Challenge is primarily intended to encourage young minds to employ their enterprise capability, communication and planning skills in creative ways.
The Challenge kicked off on the third day of GEW, November 18. “The teams were asked to create a project proposal based on a question,” says Rajbhandary.
This year’s question was as follows: “In today’s world, young people face a lot of competition and choices for jobs and careers, but they do not have the right advice or information to help them make their decisions about their futures. What product or service can your team develop for young people in your community to better understand their options (study/jobs/self-employment) and to raise their confidence and skills to help them feel ready for the world of work?”
After an entire day of brainstorming, the proposals were submitted to the judges the following day. On the panel of judges were environmentalist Anil Chitrakar, Deepal Nepali from the Council for TEVT, and Regional Education Strategic Adviser of the British Council, Lynne Heslop.
The Seti Mahakali Nursing Campus from Bhasi-4 of Kanchanpur district in the far western part of the country grabbed this year’s Rs. 100,000 award to implement their project proposal.
“We think a counseling center can help confused young people to make career choices,” puts in Rushila Poudel, the faculty member of the winning team. The students involved were Sukarsha Ghimire, Sunita Chaudhary, Madhu Gurung, Babita Bista, and Meena Chand.
“We haven’t started implementing the project as of yet but we’re thinking of choosing a place in the locality,” says Poudel.
Apart from building the center, the team also has to make a five-minute-long video about their project which will be entered into the regional level of the Challenge that includes Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.
All the videos will be uploaded to a public networking website such as YouTube, and will be open to public voting. To top it off, the team with the majority of votes in the regional Challenge will get an opportunity to travel to the UK in March 2010.
Last year’s regional Challenge champion was, in fact, the Nepali team who won the largest number of votes with their “Eco-Filtration-cum-Dryer-Plant” Project.
Related story
Govt invites proposals for startup enterprise loans
