INVITATION: I will be presenting my research- “MOBILE REVOLUTION IN NEPAL, A Survey on Youths of Kathmandu” tomorrow at Martin Chautari. If you are in Kathmandu and available, plz join!!! See you there.

Autism is a life-long neuro-developmental disorder. The United Nations has said that autism is growing as a global health crisis. But many people in Nepal don’t know about autism because we lack awareness programs.

I chose this topic because mainstream media in Nepal has ignored this issue and the government has not done anything. We don’t have a single autism care center for adult autistic people here.

There was one difficulty that I had to overcome. No banks in Nepal accept MasterCard, a requirement for even free book publishers on iTunes. I went through all the banks and their credit card offices in Kathmandu asking for a valid credit card number that works internationally. Their response was the same: “Sorry, we don’t have such policy.” I wrote to Apple saying that I cannot use MasterCard in Nepal. I tried to convince them, but they tried not to understand my concerns with their policy. Luckily, my friend from another country shared his credit card to let me upload the book.

I have requested that Apple have a policy that is friendly to developing countries, not just to developing nations. I also requested that banks in Nepal start thinking globally.

How can the book reach a Nepali audience? To view my Multi-Touch book, users must have an iPad and the iBooks 2 app. I totally acknowledge that the readership may be low from rural Nepal, as my country is going through load-shedding — an intentional electrical power shutdown for non-overlapping periods of time to prevent a total power outage. But I wanted to experiment and figure out what’s possible in Nepal. My work on autism is just a start, not an end.

As published on PolicyMic

By Rajneesh Bhandari

As I am reporting the ILO’s first ever Youth Employment Forum at their headquarter in Geneva, Switzerland, the statistics released on youth unemployment is quite shocking. The reported titled “Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012” was released this week and it gives a very alarming picture that every youth should think and prepare about.

The report provides a clear picture on the trend of youth unemployment from 1991 to 2012. The report says 12.7 percent of people aged 15 to 24 are unemployed. Last year 12.6 percent of young people were unemployed and in 2007 the rate of youths unemployed was recorded at 11.6 percent. Figures from North Africa shows that a whopping 27.9 percent of youths remained unemployed last year. 26.5 percent of youths were unemployed in the Middle East, 17.6 percent in central and South-Eastern Europe, 14.3 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 11.5 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa and 13.5 percent in south-east Asia and the Pacific.

Another shocking information that the report predicts which is that the youth employment rate will remain at the same high level for the coming four years.

ILO says, youth employment also poses a threat to political stability and social cohesion.  To cope with the crisis ILO suggests that governments in the world should create more jobs. Not only more but better education and training is needed for the purpose.  The report also suggest promotion of youth entrepreneurship, making youth employment a priority, promoting economic diversification, linking education and training to the world of work among others to foster  youth employment.

I am among the five young journalists selected from across the globe to cover the YE Forum. I am actually digging out stories from the youth participants of Asia and some unique stories. And trying to learn and share how every youth in the world could get decent work.

If you want to take part in the discussion how could youth employment be improved you can take part on twitter using #YEF.

Autism TKP

My story ‘Silent sufferers’ published in The Kathmandu Post on Saturday, March 31, 2012. Here is a link to the pdf version: http://epaper.ekantipur.com/ktpost/showtext.aspx?boxid=14312234&parentid=16742&issuedate=3132012 and for web version: http://www.ekantipur.com/2012/03/31/saturday-features/silent-sufferers/351523.html

Four-year-old Binu Dangol enters the room with her mother and father, dressed daintily in a blue t-shirt and trousers, her hair done neatly, but I can see that she’s scared. She leans away at the sight of me and my camera, ready to take flight, and I have very little idea of how to comfort her.

It was an International Reportage Workshop with photojournalist Philip Blenkinsop, jointly organised by photo.circle, Pathshala South Asian Media Academy and Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, that had triggered a desire within me to shed light upon stories that are yet untold. Among many such issues that exist within our country, it was the silent sufferers of autism—a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder—that particularly caught my attention. And Binu is one of them.

Binu’s parents—who own a small grocery store—tell me they had been worried because their daughter had not begun speaking even after she’d reached the age of two. While at first, they’d been hopeful that the silence was temporary, their concerns

multiplied over time, as she seemed increasingly incapable of responding verbally. This being an otherwise healthy child, they were at a loss as to what to do.

Desperate, they decided to take her to a dhami (local healer). They were told that it was the influence of a spirit, and a number of rituals were recommended, but nothing worked. “We tried everything,” says Bimala, Binu’s mother. “We just wanted to hear her speak. I still feel like she’s going to open her mouth one day and speak.”

Eventually, after an evaluation at Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, the Dangol family were able to gain some clarity. They were informed that their daughter had major symptoms of autism spectrum—a disorder they were completely unfamiliar with. Binu’s father, Birendra, points at my camera and tells me that she had a similar reaction to the equipment at the hospital. “She just wasn’t ready for treatment,” he explains. “So we brought her back.”

Binu, who had been enrolled in a boarding school at the time, was pulled out and taken home. Today, she hangs around the grocery shop with her mother and father, mostly playing by herself.

Lack of awareness

Researchers say one in 110 children suffer from autism globally, and boys are four times more prone to the disorder than girls. Studies also show that more kids are likely to be diagnosed with autism in the year 2012 worldwide than AIDS, diabetes and cancer combined.

And in Nepal, out of 12.8 million children below 18 years of age, approximately 117,000 are known to be autistic—rather shocking considering not many people are even aware of the disorder here. There has been a recent rise in the level of awareness, owing to the growing exposure of particular cases. But then again, until official data can be collected, it is difficult to project exact figures or execute long-term awareness programmes.Matters are made worse by the fact that there is currently no cure for autism.

Helping hands

Back in Kathmandu, a young boy is busy with his lessons. He works on assignments for different subjects—drawing, painting, simple math as well as grammatical tasks.

In between, he fields questions from his mother.

Kreet Amatya is an autistic child, whose parents are both doctors. Every evening Dr Sunita Amatya, Kreet’s mother, puts him through a structured teaching routine that allows him to pick up the basics of a number of different skills, and he has been flourishing under this system. “Kreet loves drawing,” she says. On cue, Kreet picks up a piece of paper and begins to sketch a summery scene with sun, clouds and umbrellas, as his mother looks on with a smile.

Kreet goes to a montessori school and is an excellent example of how the right kind of support can help autistic children. His parents have arranged to have a caretaker accompany him to school, to help him cope better in a social environment. “It was initially very difficult to diagnose,” says Dr Kapendra Amatya, Kreet’s father. “Even the pediatrician we went to at the Bharatpur Cancer Hospital couldn’t figure out that our son had autism.”

It is, of course, a constant battle, they say. “It’s not something you can take a break from,” explains Dr Sunita. What helped, though, were the classes they took on autism in India, which gave them effective pointers on how to look after an autistic child. In Nepal, Autism Care Nepal currently conducts such training programmes for parents.

Parents unite

Autism Care Nepal—the only not for profit organisation for autistic children in the country—was formally established in April 2, 2008, by a network of concerned parents.

Hem Sagar Baral, whose daughter Sylvia is autistic and suffers from speech difficulties, was at the helm of this venture. He recalls his own experiences, where, like Binu, Sylvia had been verbally unresponsive at the age of two. “She didn’t utter a word, she sat silent all the time and showed no interest in learning,” he says. Sylvia was taken to a child psychiatrist and other doctors, but they couldn’t detect any problems. And admitting her in schools didn’t work out, as she found it impossible to socialise with her classmates.

Hem was thus faced with two options—either take Sylvia abroad for care, or establish a care facility right here in Nepal. Eventually, after gathering a number of other parents who were going through the same issue, he opted for the latter, bringing to life the Autism Care Nepal centre.

The centre has so far trained 150 mothers on ways to care for autistic children, and besides providing parent training, also offers day care for the children, various treatment therapies—art and music, for example—and works to raise awareness on the condition.

Dr Sunita, who is also the Chairperson of the centre, says, “Autism is a global public health concern and people in Nepal need to be exposed more to its probability. Only early diagnosis can lead to early interventions, which could be instrumental in helping these children learn to communicate, exist and cope with societal factors.” She says that more than 60,000 to 70,000 people in Nepal are currently living with severe autism spectrum, a high level of the disorder that is associated with all sorts of psychological and social consequences.

The future

“Care centres need to be established in major cities, so we can deal with this problem head on,” says Dr Sunita. Additionally, she suggests that public and private institutions launch collaborative initiatives aimed at deciphering the complex biology of this disorder, which produces a wide range of disabilities.

Structural questions aside, Dr Sunita explains that what needs to change ultimately is attitude. The perception of autistic children in Nepali society is still largely negative, reflected in the fact that no laws exist that deal specifically with the needs of those with autism. These kids are instead considered misfits and even parents themselves are mostly in denial about the condition and its possible consquences. Until we learn to accept and embrace the condition for what it is, we will be relegating these little ones to a lifetime of physical and mental discrimination. April 2 is the fifth annual World Autism Awareness Day.

According to Nepal Telecommunication Authority 50 percent of Nepal’s population are now using mobile phones. There are 13,354,477 mobile users in Nepal out of which 12,498,243 are GSM users and 856,234 are CDMA users.

Nepal Telecom, also known as NDCL, has 6,502,916 mobile users while NCELL- a private telecom company has
6,851,561 users. Mobile users in the last few years have increased tremendously. With the increase of mobile penetration and smart phones, mobile have become everyday device not only for Nepali citizens but also for
journalists.


A senior photo journalist of a daily newspaper in Nepal told me that he has been using I-phone to cover some
events and they are published on newspaper. Mobile pictures are used in by the online medias in Nepal. In May 2011, while Kantipur Television’s(the television station where I work) vehicle was torched KTV used a mobile footage for the news.

I believe the use of mobile should not just be limited to collecting information but also as the way of distributing news. Leading media houses in Nepal are using the mobile phones for distributing news to their readers and receiving feedbacks from the readers/audience through SMS. This has turned out to be advantageous not just for information seekers but also for information collectors like us by helping us tap the latest developments in our stories through our newsrooms.

The beauty of communication lies in the right to expression and right to information. The world has never been
connected like this ever before. It has become a global village. Bloggers and citizen journalists are pouring more information in the web. We know most of the breaking news either through twitter or facebook these days. And sometimes, we get the information directly from the spot, just like the case during operation Geronimo.

During the earthquake few months back in Nepal information flowed from twitter and facebook, people were sharing what they felt and shared their pictures and videos.

With the increasing number of televisions, online, broadsheets and radio stations citizen’s journalism is gaining significant space in Nepal. From United We blog and Mysansar.com to meroreport.net, the need and effectiveness of online media has increased a lot.

Citizen journalists from Nepal have been reporting on different websites from CNN I report to Ohmynews and various other citizen journalism
platforms.

Debate over the payment for content

This is the debate that is going on around the world whether media should pay the content produced by the citizen journalists. I think that they should be paid. With that citizen journalism would be more credible. If there is a tendency among media house to pay for what the citizens report on than that will enable people to come up with even more diverse and serious issues. This will moreover change the scenario of journalism by making every citizen a reporter.

1. Ekantipur: 80,772
2. Nagariknews: 58,508
3. Thehimalantimes: 3235 (The fan page was recently created)
On Twitter:
1. Nagariknews: 4,949
2. Thehimalayantimes: 451
(Data on February 08, 2012)

Social networking and social media are supporting the converged media. As a journalist i feel that social media has enormous power. And i use social media for following reasons:
1. to monitor news,
2. to post my news/articles/video/pictures/multimedia,
3. to engage/interact with my audience,
4. to follow topics/persons and
5. to learn new things

This month i was featured on Voice of Women, a popular monthly magazine on how i was becoming a part of social media phenomenon in Nepal. It featured my experience on how i am using social media to engage with my audience.

“I have access to internet 24 hours through my 3G mobile set. I not only access social media as a person wanting to keep in touch with friends and family, but also as a journalist trying to reach out to people, share information and get feedback on my stories. I always think twice or more before posting anything on the social networking site, and I don’t usually share anything too personal.”
Here is the link of the interview on becoming a part of the social media phenomena.

Power/Electricity is the main source for television. Without electricity we cannot imagine television. It doesn’t work. Audience cannot see/watch the content. But every year in the winter Nepal is going through power cut. Nepalese are facing 13 hrs of powercut everyday. But it’s clear that when the water level is low in the rivers the load shedding will reach up to 18 hrs a day.

Though very few are watching television with the help of inverters most of the Nepalese cannot afford it. Hence, most of the news and other programs go unwatched. It’s even difficult for the television stations to manage fuel for their generators during the petrol/diesel hike. This is the utter reality and no one could escape it.

What could be the way out? This is the million dollar question at the moment. My professor Stephen Quinn in an online class said “solar energy” could be an option. As the loadshedding problem will continue in the years to come, why not install solar system at home if it is possible. It will still be a big challenge for many middle class Nepalese to get the solars.

Another idea that clicked my mind when i am writing about audience, television and power cut is that isn’t it possible to run a television station using solar energy?

Here is a multimedia that i produced on how the power cut is affecting students?