Community Members Interested

A 2002 news article (http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/106/Headline/5700) about 17 innocent young bread-earners of a village in Nepal that were killed during a cross fire between the Nepal Government and the Maoists prompted us to raise funds to help the surviving family members’ well-being. The positive response from the Nepali people residing the United States inspired us to establish Community Members Interested (COMMITTED) – a voluntary tax-exempt non-profit group in the U.S. in 2004. In 2006, COMMITTED – Nepal was created in Nepal to implement education, poverty, environment, and health programs. COMMITTED- Nepal is comprised of a group of diverse individuals who have made a choice - a choice to not just read about news, but also to take action. Our passion is to help eradicate poverty by improving literacy in Nepal and we want to help now.

Since education has a proven correlation with other socio-economic factors such as poverty, unemployment, health, crime, inequality, and economic growth, we believe that improving education can end the vicious cycle of poverty and illiteracy. As such, COMMITTED – Nepal seeks to establish education as a basic right for all Nepali children through its Sikchya Mero Adhikar (“Education – My Right”) Campaign. COMMITTED – Nepal initiated this campaign to eliminate poverty and illiteracy in Nepal. We believe poverty should not be the reason for illiteracy. As a part of this campaign we initiated the Social Business for Education (SBE) program, to ensure that poverty is not the cause for illiteracy in Nepal. Through this program, we guarantee education up to graduation for need based students and include their household members as part of a social business to help improve household income. By making education free, the households in disparate communities will not only have educated members in the future, but also be able to divert savings from education towards food, security, health, and other critical household needs. Over the years we have also successfully implemented many small, but meaningful school infrastructure improvements in urban and rural areas of Nepal, such as Kanya Mandir School, the first girls’ school of Nepal in Kathmandu and Sri Raithane School in Sindupalchowk District.

Out of 28.5 million people in the country, only 60 percent of age 15 and above are considered literate. Although the government is making significant attempts to improve the literacy rate, Nepal needs to act fast to ensure that tomorrow’s workforce is significantly more literate than the current trend. COMMITTED – Nepal dedicated to helping ease this development crisis in Nepal.