लेखक: shrijana.kc

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On the 9^th of August 2016, Career Disha Nepal conducted Individual Career Counseling led by CDN's career counsellor Mr. Hari Krishna Dahal. Individual Career Counseling is one of the services among (Online Assessment, Individual Career Coaching, Job & educational Database, and My Future Pro) CDN is providing.

Yet most of the students after 10th grade are confused on which career path to go. What would be their further way of studies or what are their options if their SLC result does not allow them to go for higher studies. Yet, until the establishment of Career Disha Nepal, there has been no holistic and broad scale career coaching available to guide all these young people towards a prosperous future.

Individual career coaching is meant to reflect on the results from the online assessment together with a trained counselor. You will get overall information about his/her personality profile, clear information about job sectors, required qualification and job market. The aim of this session is to make the young person understand which professions would be suitable for them

Based on their personality, what is realistic in terms of the labour market and draft a rough way towards the educational pathway which can lead to the desired dream job.

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VHS Bhaktapur, Community Learning Center, runs Bhaktapur Friday Talk to engage with experienced professions and introduce youth about both current problems and simultaneously discuss new ideas. Till date, 3 major challenges have been addressed: Gender inequality, Millennium Development Goals’ success and Education.

On the 5^th of August 2016, two guest speakers gave the presentation on the topic Quality Education. One of the speakers is a renowned writer and educator Mr. Harihar Timilsina and the other speaker was Career Disha Nepal’s Mr. Sagar Ghimire. They both expanded on the hardship of achieving quality education for all and gave few solutions where education as a whole can be understood better for Nepal.

The 1^st presenter Mr. Timilsina started his talk by questioning what quality education was. He further emphasized that our society has various presumptions about quality education. We, according to him, tend to believe that being fluent in speaking and writing skills (for example) is ‘Quality Education’. He also claimed that the western QUALITY EDUCATION (for Nepalese) has resulted in creation of inhuman, exploitative, self-centered and destructive manpower. Nepalese education system is to a high extend a replica of American educational system. Mr Timilsina then questioned what can be called quality education when even the developed countries have failed in achieving it.

According to the next speaker, Mr. Ghimire, most students fail both in creating enthusiasm and excitement in learning because the current system does not resonate with their learning pattern. According to him, this creates a multiplier effect which in the end results in a mass number of unemployed youth, failing students, and dispassionate workforce.

Through an example he explained how our education system is certificate oriented, and the society tend to limit the potential by grouping them according to their prowess in examination grade.

According to Mr Ghimire, education system needs to be seen more holistically. We too need to learn that education goes more than formal education -- informal and new approach non-formal (More Open Online Course) that is hierarchically structured chronologically graded general education system, training institution and online education system respectively.  He repeatedly questioned the audience about the means of education, career choices, and information

To develop a quality education, Mr Timilsina adds the terms “soft skill” and “kaizen”. Soft skill describe those personal attributes that indicate a high level of emotional intelligence and the Sino-Japanese word “kaizen” means change for better and every day improvement. If those aspects are integrated in either education or day-to-day lives, we will receive unprecedented amount of development.

At last he showed inspirational picture black dot in the big white space i.e. we are roaming around small problem which make individual unconfident and are able to recognize opportunities around us. He concluded his speech that quality education cannot be universal, it depends upon county: its culture, existing traditions and development level.

Both the talks could be concluded at we can’t change our education system to quality education overnight. So, take time to look thoroughly to find the root cause of failing education system and find the way to enhance education. We can find a way to make the current educational system more individual (to work for us) by choosing appropriate education in various combination.

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CTEVT and Its Importance

Career Disha Nepal wants to share available alternative choices of education system of Nepal. Most of us are unaware about educational pathway which were available for decades in Nepal. Take for example of a youth that does not want to study subjects that he/she feels not beneficial for them. They might be unknown about the shorter way to reach their goal and select the academic line even they are not interested other courses rather than they love to do.

Council for Technical Educational and Vocational Training aims at providing training and professional knowledge which otherwise is ignored in the academic stream.

CTEVT was established in 1989 with aim of strengthening vocational technical education in Nepal. Function of the CTEVT is to produce technical and skillful human resources required. It  mainly involves in policy and program formulation, coordination and facilitation, quality control and program implementation.

Why is CTEVT worth knowing?

• Footstep is counting: If your parents are electrician and you are working with them, you would acquire required skills from them. Your informal working experience can be certified by National Skill Training Board (after series of examination), to make you a certified electrician.

• Specific career path: If you do not like to go thoroughly with other optional subjects and choose rather to stick to one particular field CTEVT is an answer. CTEVT courses can be based on your demands, needs and interest.
• Within short period of time reach the career goal: Naturally, Human beings are always hurrying to get something that they like. On the other hand economically poor parents, who cannot afford their children’s lengthy formalstudies tend not to provide them with education as they believe it to be a heavy opportunity cost. So if you want to be independent, then CTEVT would be a considerate
• Employment generation: CTEVT sets its program based on research according to the labor market and labor Thus creating workers that have a high demand in the job market.
• Technical education: CTEVT has prepared different courses to produce a more skillful manpower which in a way encourages entrepreneurship

• World-class employer: In the 21^st century there is barely any restriction to migration. In the case of Nepal, migration of unskilled workers has exponentially increased in the past 2-3 decades. The popular fault they seem to have is that Nepal provides no real opportunity, however, one can expand their potential simply by acquiring the skill.  At the same time, CTEVT provides training which is acceptable

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Today, Career Disha Nepal’s group watched the almost half hour video related to the Educational System of today.

Today’s education system is about to be centralize in one, homogenous system. System, where testing the ability of a student is through sets of examinations which later is considered their worthiness, their value. In Nepal, more than half the population cannot pass SLC and sadly we have been having the same set of system without any major reform. What has not been considered in the system is the individuality. Every one has inherent different perception, desire and skills from birth. In short, Education today become a FAST FOOD, for instance when children enroll in Kindergarten, teacher teach them already existed lesson. There is gap arising between both teacher and students as the knowledge are imposed rather than fostered. Thus we can generalize that the issue that we are teaching new generation in traditional way and building our children as we are, which is not compatible for the 21st century.

As already mentioned, each individual has different ideology and ability. To develop those inborn qualities, one should recognize it and give it a proper shape. The current education system (around the globe) expects the youth to think differently, out of box while teaching the same old generic concepts and not giving space for growth. So, time has come for revolution where change in deep rooted education system is a must.

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The 1^st international conference on Social Entrepreneurship was held at Hyatt Regency, Kathmandu on the 30^th June- 1^st July. The two days' conference was organized by Kings College and partner organizations with the objective of "Rebuilding Nepal through Social Entrepreneurship". There were both national and international participants as well as speakers and research paper presenters.

Career Disha Nepal attended the conference and participated in both presentation and display of services through booth. Approximately, more than two hundred people visited our booth which included experts, CEOs, IT Personnel, educators and students. They mentioned that CDN has a unique product which is required for all youth including students, who stop academia and those who want to change their professional and academic fields. They felt our services ware unique because in Nepal, no one has ever brought this concept into action till now. The expert involved to prepare this psychometric assessment. To know the vastness of job market CDN conducted a long research. Similarly, the results after filled up assessment were scientifically proved and it link education to career path. The online assessment and The Future Pro help to guidance entire youth academic and career path. So it is not only required for those youth who are not holding their interest based career path but to those who are willing to change their occupation and academic path. The visitors were excited and enthusiastic to know more about psychometric assessment and The Future Pro that CDN provided.

One of the most interesting parts of booth was that the visitors shared their own story. They shared how they chose their professional and academic path disregard to their interest. They felt by heart that it was significant for them when they are in search of guideline of academic and career path. According to visitors, they followed their parent’s suggestions, market popularity job as well as enrolled their academic faculty regarding to their marks in SLC. The visitors wanted to recommend this assessment to their juniors’ youngsters in order to make them able to choose their own academics based on interest. All visitors had their own story on how they came up with their career path but some example they shared to CDN are as follows: one example is that one of the teachers who teaches remote village, shared his experience. During his teaching experience, he found out that those students were unfamiliar about the fact that there existed a large range of job market in Nepal. They knew about 4-5 jobs related to labor which was only available. Regarding this, it was clear that the youth living in remote area lacking information about the vastness of locally available job market so students needed workshop about job market. Such as youth problems are not limited to only remote areas but the students studying and living in city areas also have not followed academics based on interest. Another urban settled example is about a working woman named Bambi who is a social worker working at Global Peace Organization. According to her, she was from an engineering background but never really liked it. As she had chosen that field without any concept about academics but later on she realized that it was not her interest field and changed her profession.

These stores illustrate that choosing the career was still unsatisfactory if your profession are not based on your interest,not only outside the valley but within the valley as well. Even today, students are finding difficulty in coming through their academics and professional path based on interest. Hence CDN services should reach to the youth of all 75 districts to help them recognize their own career and academic path based on their interested.

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In the beginning of April, 2016 freelance website developer, Patrick volunteered as a webpage developer at CDN for a month. Within those 4 weeks, he developed a full-fledged student assessment online along with making the database more intuitive. In addition, he assessed previously developed sectors such as database, student assessment and provided CDN with valuable advice and suggestions on how to optimize the development process.

More than thirty countries visited, 34 years old German guy was fond of Nepali food, Dhal Bhat, MO: MO, Chat-pat and that the one thing he is going to miss the most about Nepal is its liveliness.  He was work concentrated and never left his Vietnamese cap that looked somewhat like a combat hat. He knew a couple of words in Nepali, but the ones he knew somewhat provided an essence of being a Nepali.  ‘KE GARNE’ was something that will always remind us of Patrick, the phrase that roughly translates to ‘WHAT TO DO’ well describes what every Nepali is going through.  We will miss his introduction of Chat-pat to the CDN team and his contribution will always be online (so it will never be forgotten). His contribution till date has been of highest impact to the team: he did so much in such small frame of time.

We definitely will miss the tall guy!

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  After the hectic first 2 months, that kept the team of Career Disha Nepal incredibly busy, yesterday was a breath of fresh air. A long tiring walk, with water gushing from don’t know where; swaying trees’ shade cooling the hot, bright sun was something we all needed. And midst all that we all unanimously felt that Patrick was the only one who didn’t miss his laptop.

    Hari’s witty jokes about something he had heard 7 years ago from a person he didn’t know brought us a conclusion that ‘सुन्दरी’ (Sundari) was the word-of-the-day. Mr CEO, felt right at home, walking faster than all and his melodious songs felt more of a howl than a song. Sagar, the flex carrier, was doing his job little too well, we supposed as it was missing in most of the action.           The MVP (Most-valuable-player), undoubtedly Inge gave us all a task that was virtually impossible, singing the Nepali national anthem in GERMAN! But with the skill of Sagar and the German fluency of Patrick, we did it. Even Prajan, the youngest member of CDN, (who knows nothing of the vicious nature of the above-mentioned language) sang the national anthem.

We played games, took over 1,000 photos (NATURALLY) and took our descend. The lunch was unmistakably the best part of the trek: Spanish cheese, Inge’s fruit cake and home-made brown bread, Suresh’s recommended yogurt and ever refreshing Kabucha.

What could go wrong? Hari’s bike made a lot of noise, Srijana lost her shawl and Sagar wore a red-tight t-shirt. In short, nothing. It was an amazing day out. Now back to work as the online version of the student assessment is on its way!

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Career Disha Nepal conducted Career Workshop and psychometric Assessment for the six students those recently gave SLC exam, at Forum for the Welfare of Himalayan Children, Bungmati, Lalitpur. Both program led by Career Disha Nepal psychologist, Mr. Hari Krishna Dahal and Joyti Nepal.

The career workshop aimed at creating a mindset for that certain group about the vastness of the job sectors available locally. It was also focused on the tasks, activities as well as the employers involved in various sectors. Similarly, the Interest Based Assessment involved assessment of various sorts like professional orientation, personality traits and educational interest fields.

The session started at 10:00 am last at two hours. The day was filled with experimental games, eye-opening questions as well as a few laughs of astonishment. Similarly, all the children were excited and enthusiasm. The day commenced with group works as well as question sessions and ended with self -reflection from the youth.

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[:en]In the 20^th April 2016, Inge Patsch,  the director of CDN, gave a presentation titled ‘Girls in IT’.  The program of ICT (information communication Technology) in Skills and Education was held at Tri-Chandra Multiple Campus, Kathmandu, Nepal. In this interaction program only girls were allowed to participate as the aim of the program was to encourage and promote girls in the IT related fields. There were five guest lecturers who gave presentation, namely, Inge Patsch from CDN,  Binita Shrestha, Sunita Pandey, Damodar Paudel and Hari Prasad Pokhrel , from SICT Nepal. Mr. Pokhrel was the first presenter who gave insight about the term ICT and what it means. At the same time he addressed how ICT can be empowering and talked in length of its scopes, advantages and disadvantages. He also mentioned that IT is the place where a creative mind can be presented. Second presenter was Ms. Patsch who came with two main messages, the first being girls and boys are equally talented in the IT field. The second one: NERD (Now is the right time to start, Everybody is different, Reading is not all and Develop your skills). She also added her stories about how she fought with the society in Austria in order to achieve her goal. Sunita Pandey, Damodar Paudel and Binita Shrestha discussed about the banner “ICT in Skills and Education”. Miss Shrestha come with idea of Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) also shared her inspirational story of studying IT, here in Nepal.  She was the only one girl in a class with 150 boys. Sometimes she felt that IT field was not for girl.  But now she graduate in engineering in information and Technology. She was able to win the second award at Presentation Competition conducted by NTA on international girls in ICT day 2015 and also been the title winner of”Empower 2015”as “Young Aspiring Women Leaders”. She was not one girl who facing such a situation it is still prevalence. The program was run by Suwash Khadka and Rashmi Tiwari from the SICT  Nepal (Society for Information Communication Technology). The program started at 10am and end last at 11:30 am. One and half hour program was filled with insightful lecture from the guest, mind opening question and solution. [:]

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On the 1^st of April 2016, Career Disha Nepal held an extensive workshop to 13 young children from grade 8 and 9, at Forum for the Welfare of Himalayan Children, Bungmati, Lalitpur. The introduction workshop aimed at creating a mindset for that certain group about the vastness of the job sectors available locally. It was also focused on the tasks, activities as well as the employers involved in various sectors.

The session started at 11:00 am local time sharp after an hour of preparing flexes, charts and other arrangements. The day was filled with experimental games, eye-opening questions as well as a few laughs of astonishment, similarly, all the children were excited and enthusiasm. The day commenced with group works as well as question sessions and ended with self -reflection from the youth.

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