Social Innovation Fellowship 2025
Fifteen fellows traveled across Nepal’s Madhesh, Pahad, and Himal regions, learning through community immersion, entrepreneurship, reflection, and real-world projects.
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Fellows
15 fellow -
Duration
8 weeks -
Location
Janakpur (Terai), Panchkhal (Pahad), and Helambu (Himalayas)
Three Foundations of the Fellowship
Each learning experience connected personal reflection, practical skills, and community engagement.
Intersectional Identity
Who are you—and how has the world shaped that answer?
Fellows explored questions of identity, privilege, power, disability, inclusion, and belonging through conversations, field visits, and lived experiences across Nepal.
Project Management
From ideas to action.
Fellows learned practical tools for planning, collaboration, and execution while working on real community-based projects alongside local stakeholders.
Entrepreneurship
Innovation rooted in place.
Through direct engagement with local entrepreneurs, fellows explored how businesses, livelihoods, and communities create change in different contexts.
Learning Across Nepal
Each location offered a different lens through which fellows experienced Nepal’s people, cultures, challenges, and possibilities.
- Janakpur
- Rajarshi Janak University
- Weeks 1–2
Stories From the Field
We arrived in Janakpur, the city of Sita, where Mithila art lived across walls and everyday spaces. We experienced Kachahari, where youth led public discourse and community accountability was performed in the open. Conversations with the Blue Diamond Society challenged how we understood identity, inclusion, and courage, forcing us to sit with questions we had never fully named before. Through field visits, artists, and lived moments in Janakpur, we began to see complexity not as theory, but as reality unfolding around us.
- Panchkhal
- Sarbamangala Multiple Campus
- Weeks 3-4
Stories From the Field
We worked the land alongside farmers, learning agriculture as lived practice rather than concept. We spent time with people navigating disability in rural Nepal, witnessing how structural barriers shape daily life in ways both visible and invisible. What once felt distant became immediate, present in stories, labor, and resilience shared with us each day.
- Helambu
- Yangrima Boarding School
- Weeks 5–6
Stories From the Field
We reached Helambu during Tsechu. Masked dancers, ritual, and silence in the high Himalayas. Between festivals and stillness, we turned inward, processing everything the journey had surfaced. In that altitude and pause, our ideas for ventures began to take shape, rooted in reflection rather than urgency.
Kathmandu | Venture Sprint & Graduation
We returned to Kathmandu with different eyes. In an intense sprint, we transformed lived insights into venture ideas. Graduation wasn’t an ending—it marked a shift. Two months across Nepal had changed how we see, listen, and act in the world.
Ready to cross three worlds?
What began as an eight-week fellowship has evolved into a full-fledged Master’s in Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship (MSIE). Fifteen months. Three regions. One cohort. This isn’t learning from a distance, it’s learning that asks something real of you: to live it, question it, and be changed by it. If you’re ready for that journey, this is where it begins.