Message from the Country Director

2010/11 has been an exciting year for Practical Action. Our head office in the UK began a series of events to mark the centenary of the birth of Practical Action’s founder, E F Schumacher. The events were organised to introduce Schumacher’s ideas to a new generation and to discuss the relevance of his ideas towards the economic and environmental crisis even today. Schumacher dreamt of a world free of poverty, by making use of technology that is appropriate, and that can be owned by people for their benefit. We continue to work with his vision to ensure access to improved technology for poor people to make a difference in their lives.

The Nepal Office achieved further growth in 2011 and it has been a busy year, but equally challenging and exciting. The political environment has been fragile and unstable with frequent changes in governments. The instability in the political environment had implications in the development space as well, thus delays in transfer of resources, materials and support to the people. Nevertheless, the hard work of partners and staff enabled the projects to retain on track. Likewise, the trust from donor communities boosted our morale which helped us achieve our mission with utmost dedication.

We supported our partners to implement projects on the ground and had some significant works on the higher side of our working model ‘Achieving Impact at Scale’. Noteworthy are – developing guidelines and strategies together with the government departments for uptake of successful technologies and approaches. These initiatives have justified that the technology we have been promoting to overcome poverty are appropriate and important stakeholders are willing to upscale our good practices. Among the many technologies promoted by Practical Action, the gravity goods ropeway technology has all the potential for broader uptake. Department of Local Infrastructure Development and Agricultural Roads (DoLIDAR) accepts it as a complimentary means of transportation to maximise the benefits of roads and bridges. DoLIDAR has been piloting this technology in a number of hill districts with technical assistance of Practical Action. Our support to draft the Early Warning System strategy together with the government stakeholders has shown bright prospect in nationwide uptake of this technology to save people’s lives and assets from all kinds of disasters. The Food Security strategy currently being drafted for one of our working districts has generated interests from the government and donors.

First of its kind for Practical Action, this year through Market Access for Smallholder Farmers (MASF) - Dairy Project, we partnered with private banks and agriculture companies to increase access to finance and affordable services to demonstrate that rural poor can adopt dairy as sustainable means of their livelihood. To increase access of poor to technical knowledge and to deal with their issues of poverty, we have scaled up our ‘Practical Answers’ programme by partnering with a number of organisations. During the reporting period, we have reached many people with various knowledge materials.

The growth and achievement of Nepal Office was greater than we expected in the beginning of our current strategy 2007-12. This year we worked on developing a new strategy 2012-17 and we are excited by the choices we are proposing for our new strategy. The new strategy will create a substantially bigger and more effective impact, doubling the number of people we help directly.

To sum this report in numbers, this year, Practical Action managed to reach 37,738 HHs through its 9 projects implemented in Achham, Banke, Bardiya, Chitwan, Dailekh, Dhading, Doti, Gorkha, Kailali, Kalikot, Nawalparasi, Rupandehi, and Tanahu Districts. Out of these HHs, 10,062 HHs have increased their food security, 14,292 HHs are resilient to the negative effects of climate change such as floods and landslides, 8,792 HHs have increased mobility year round and have access to goods transportation for a nominal fee, and 4,952 HHs are now free of indoor air pollution, have healthy homes with clean toilets, and access to safe drinking water.

I take this opportunity to thank all our generous donors, the Government of Nepal, supporters, partners and people for joining their shoulders in our mission. We will continue to commit ourselves for excelling in our mission to bring about a positive change in people’s lives.

Achyut Luitel
Country Director

Contact us

Practical Action Nepal Office
PO Box 15135,
Narayan Gopal Sadak, Maharajgunj
House no. 2677
Kathmandu, Nepal

Telephone: +00 977 1 4720 803, 4720 804 and 4720 761
Fax: +00 977 1 4720 402

e-mail: nepal@practicalaction.org.np