Nepali teacher wins Magsaysay Award

From scidev.net
"Mahabir Pun, 52, from the remote village of Nangi in Nepal, will receive the 2007 Award for Community Leadership and a US$50,000 prize along with six other awardees in Manila, Philippines this month (31 August).

Pun started the project — The Nepal Wireless Networking Project — to meet the communication needs of his village, seven hours climb to the nearest road and without a telephone connection.

"I believe that better communication systems are important for the overall development of a community and a nation," Pun told SciDev.Net.

Under the project, villagers and a team of international volunteers initially powered several computers with small hydro-generators in a nearby stream.

They then linked them wirelessly to the Internet with a series of television dish antennas and mountaintop relay stations, using the nearest telephone connection in the town of Pokhara, a two-day trip away.

Pun said the project has so far provided 14 rural villages with access to services like telemedicine, distance learning, e-marketing of local products and telephone services."
From an editorial in scidev.net

"Almost unnoticed, Nepal is developing simple and cheap technologies that make the best of local resources and don't damage the environment.

Down a narrow alley in Kathmandu's historic heart, through a low door, you enter Akal Man Nakarmi's workshop. Nakarmi's surname means 'metalsmith' and the soft-spoken craftsman's ancestors crafted copper utensils and forged statues of deities in bronze.

Today, Nakarmi makes small turbines called Peltric Sets for micro-hydro electric generation plants across the Himalaya. He can't keep up with demand.

Nepal's successes in scientific application in recent decades aren't about grandiose hydropower dams or major infrastructure projects.

The new technologies that have worked have been indigenously designed, based on traditional skills and knowledge, and are cheap and easy to use and maintain. In fact, to visit Nepal these days is to see the 'small is beautiful' concept of development economist E. F. Schumacher in action."