The Tulasi Meher UNESCO Club (TMUC) is a Kathmandu-based NGO building capacity of rural Himalayan communities in areas of income generation, health, and literacy. TMUC has a 15-year track record providing integrated development programming in the most remote parts of Nepal. In January 2007, TMUC initiated the Youth-Managed Resource Center initiative (YMRC) with the support of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL) at Utah State University in order to train youth leaders, provide technical support to supervisors, and to deliver hardware/software tools to participating communities.

The goal of the YMRC is to amplify rural educational and entrepreneurial opportunities through improved access to technology and utilization of relevant information from digital libraries and online content. Due to the rugged Himalayan terrain of these communities, rural people suffer from delayed dissemination of information; the YMRC responds to this need by facilitating access to critical information, thereby increasing opportunities for untouchables and ethnic groups to generate income through community entrepreneurship. The YMRC provides training and facilitation of community action projects in remote villages, particularly emphasizing the role of youth as community mobilizers who empower others from their disadvantaged and minority groups.

USU has provided training, computers, digital cameras, software, and salary support to YMRC sites located in Kathmandu District (Sankhu) and Gorkha District (Luxmi) in response to youth demands for opportunities to gather and learn skills. Both centers are managed by youth volunteers and operate through donated facilities and utilities provided by their communities. On average, 50 people per day come to the YMRC to engage in various activities such as: verifying crop prices in India, conducting market inventories, searching for relevant health information, and sending/receiving email. Women’s groups, agricultural groups and small business owners have received training through youth volunteers (15 in Sankhu and 22 in Luxmi) trained in basic computer skills to instruct others and to manage their centers. In January 2007, COSL provided training for youth leaders from existing YMRCs in Gorkha and Sankhu as well as youth leaders from three other districts throughout Nepal who wish to replicate the YMRC initiative in their areas (Kavre, Kaski and Lalitpur).

The youth from Kavre, Kaski, and Lalitpur are very eager to replicate the YMRC successes in Kathmandu and Gorkha as well as to work alongside them as partner YMRCs. With support from COSL these three districts have prepared for the YMRC initiative because their youth leaders have already been selected and trained on the hardware and software resources which facilitate the management and implementation of their YMRC. As partner districts of TMUC, youth leaders are ensured a network of support through the training tools and local content being produced at existing sites as well as on-site technical assistance provided by a traveling program manager funded by COSL. Through TMUC support, these three districts have initialized public-private partnerships that will provide the local facilities, electricity and internet connections for housing the YMRC. Only funding for the hardware is missing and we are working to find immediate support for the YMRC resources for these three districts so that they may initiate their centers while momentum is high.