Be the change

“We wanted to join forces to do something that would fill a gap in our society that was not being addressed.”

That’s how Kamana Neupane, Neena Vaidya, Preeti Kumari Sah, Sarmita Shrestha and Shitanshu Dhakal describe the beginning of their collaboration as Aarogya, one of the top two teams at this year’s Generation Unlimited Youth Challenge in Nepal.

Co-hosted by UNDP and UNICEF in partnership with Tyrocity.com and King's College, the Youth Challenge Nepal initiative seeks to support young female entrepreneurs and innovators turn their ideas into reality.

From among a wide initial pool of submissions, the five most promising teams were chosen to receive a seed fund of NPR 100,000 (US$ 852 approx.) each and undergo three rigorous months of mentorship. Two of these teams have now qualified to go onto the global round, where they will compete with 80 other teams from around the world for the opportunity to engage in a year-long acceleration programme to test, develop and launch their projects with seed funding of upto US$ 20,000.

Aarogya’s pitch for the challenge centres on giving young people – adolescents in particular – access to mental health support by creating a digital peer support system. The programme envisions creating student circles within schools where members can open up about their problems and support each other. Also planned are orientation sessions from experts in the field targeted at students, teachers and parents.

Given how COVID-19 has exacerbated mental health issues, including in children and young people, Aarogya feels it is more important than ever to set up such safe spaces and support mechanisms.

“Mental health is still such a taboo subject…we wanted to give young people a ventilation tool to express themselves because that’s one of the first steps to ending stigma,” says Neena. “Once that happens, we can then promote help-seeking behaviors.”

It had been a similar desire to stimulate behavior change that had fuelled Swastha Naari, the second team to have qualified for the global round. Members Manisha Hada, Samyoga Bhattarai, Sapana Subedi, Shreya Dhungana, Sonika Baniya and Srijana Raut have merged their backgrounds and skills – a mix of engineering, IT, public health and pharmacy – to create a mobile app to help health facilities digitize patient data and history, particularly that of pregnant women, and set up reminders for follow-up visits for both health service providers and patients.

One of the app’s objectives is to ensure that pregnant women don’t miss their antenatal check-ups, paving the way for better health and safer deliveries. It also dispenses information and advice on areas such as nutrition, key for a healthy pregnancy.

“More than technology, it’s about awareness, and convincing mothers that they have the power to make the right decisions for their bodies and their babies,” says Srijana.

She explains that the app is especially pertinent in the COVID-19 era. “The app also allows women to connect with doctors for remote consultations, which would help reduce the need for physical contact even more.”

Both teams recount the Youth Challenge journey as something of an experience in creative “unlearning”. “Our mentors pushed us to challenge every single assumption we had about our project,” Srijana says. “It was difficult, but ultimately very rewarding because it helped us to really dig into and work out our concept.”

On her part, Preeti says that besides the opportunity to streamline their idea, she has personally gained a great deal of confidence over the 300+ hours of mentorship the teams went through. “I’m generally not the most outspoken person, but it was such an open, encouraging environment that I felt more and more comfortable expressing and asserting myself as time went on,” she says.