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Empowering the youth
NOV 20 - Ram Tamang, from a rural village in Kaski, left school in grade eight. He was forced to drop out by his friends, who were Maoist cadres, and join them. Insurgent and rebellious ideas were impressed upon him; he did not believe in the modern educational system, which he called “impractical and feudal”. He started believing violence was the only way out. When the insurgency ended, there was no prospect for him anywhere.
Jiban Baral thought this was ridiculous. A few people were grabbing all possible opportunities, while a majority of those who had fought in the war could rely only on agriculture as an occupation. Baral began to think—why can the youth not be empowered with skills and knowledge?
“Someone said that the world is a dangerous place, not because of those who are evil, but because of those who do nothing. One of the lessons that I learned from Ram’s situation was that we should take initiative to bring about change, no matter how small it is, ourselves,” says Baral. So, when he was 26, he founded Alternatives, a Nepali youth-led social enterprise. Through his youth-empowerment programme, he has encouraged the Nepali youth to become social entrepreneurs. His programmes work to create new possibilities and practices so that the youth can materialise their enthusiastic and pragmatic visions in their local communities.
Baral currently has ten youth-related programmes running under the aegis of his organisation, and is a pioneer in youth micro-finance. He finds it surprising that even though there are several micro-finance organisations in rural areas, none have seriously considered the youth as a target group. After all, Baral believes, it is young people who have the greatest potential and zeal to work and succeed.
He will start a campaign for youth in rural areas called ‘83%’ from December. “Eighty three percent of Nepal’s youth lives in rural areas, and the age-group does not have as many organisations working for them as for other groups. We want to change that,” says Baral. He does not say it explicitly, but he does not want to see people’s lives such as as Ram Tamang’s go to waste, whose story inspired him to take to the cause of young people.
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