History

With a long-term vision of improving practical training and preparation of graduates to enter the global economy, Himanchal Higher Secondary School, a precursor to ENRD, was formed in 1993 as a special Nepalese community school. The school took the objective of providing quality formal education along with practical vocational training and to help produce local income through training programs such as yak/duck/fish/cattle farming, camping grounds development, handicrafts and paper making. Despite these important goals, the direct shortage of qualified teachers, doctors, leadership and resources in the area put us with an enormous barrier to success.

In 1997, Mahabir Pun, a dedicated and visionary school teacher from the Himanchal Higher Secondary School, set out to address these problems and thereby improve the overall educational and life experiences of communities that this school served. With support of foreign volunteers, Mahabir Pun established a wireless internet network in 5 villages of the Myagdi district to facilitate information exchange and communication, to introduce the people from these areas to the internet, and to disseminate the medical and educational resources that these communities lacked.

The initial success of this effort encouraged Mahabir Pun and his growing team to extend and replicate this network in more parts of Nepal. An increasing number of local IT professionals from Nepal joined this effort. That emerging group of university-trained, multi-lingual professionals started to do research and development together with Mahabir Pun`s project, and thus was born the E-Network Research and Development (ENRD) organization.

Now with the help of additional dedicated Nepalese, ENRD has expanded into a formal organization with a charter, mandate, and leadership. It is diligently working to establish more information centers in different parts of Nepal to help promote e-governance and e-village projects, thereby to bring education, self-sufficiency, and progress to its constituent communities.

Know Us

Introduction

E-Network Research and Development (ENRD) is a non-profit and non-governmental organization founded for the creation and transfer of economic self-sufficiency (e-governance) through the growing global concept of e-village. ENRD has developed a unique platform for IT professionals who are promoting IT in developing countries like Nepal where it was founded. The main strength of this platform is in its ability to bring together several fields of research and development such as in public administration, global management, and computer and communication sciences for discussion and for practical project participation that can immediately benefit the lives of economically challenged communities.

ENRD believes in a multi-stakeholder partnership approach, and favors a multi-sector approach capable of understanding the stakes, the mechanisms and the consequences of e-governance and that can also generate and extend knowledge. ENRD strongly believes that E-village is going to be the most effective instrument and tool in the 21st century for the economic development and self-sufficiency of rural areas and developing economies such as those in Nepal. Guided by this belief, ENRD is working diligently for the Nepal Wireless Networking Project run by the Himanchal Higher Secondary School in western Nepal for the development of a long-term E-village program. The main involvement of ENRD is to extend wireless internet to other locations and to teach the local communities of its practical application in their daily lives; and with this success, to replicate and extend the project in other parts of Nepal. In keeping with the themes of learning, self-sufficiency and community improvement, the conclusion of the project will be benchmarked by the ability to handover the ICT leadership to the community own leadership.

Mission

ENRD is constituted as a forum for research and for the development of knowledge based ICT professionalism in society. It pools expertise from the professionals and thought-leaders in the ICT and economic management fields, and shares that accumulated skill, knowledge, art and information with others who are not ICT-savvy and therefore who have much to gain from the knowledge and expertise that is amassed there. While its principles are widely applicable in all societies, implementing ICT in a simple and cost-benefit effective form in developing countries like Nepal is the main mission of ENRD. ENRD supports and educates ICT professionals and non-professionals alike in the implementation and development of ICT based networks with the understanding that participation by all people in these networks adds to the welfare and benefit of societies.

Vision

A rural community in which all people have easy and equitable access to the ICTs to uplift their livelihood and build democratic societies

Goals

In a broader sense, ENRD goal is to empower and support rural community in and through the use of information and communication technologies to deliver social services for the purpose of accessing equitable participatory opportunity on knowledge based society building process.

In longer term, ENRD wants to maximize the benefits of the information and communication technology for the rural population in rural communities in order to make their life easier and more enjoyable.

More specifically they are: To provide quality education from tele-teaching and e-learning process To provide quality health system from tele-medicine and e-health process To provide marketing of rural products from local e-commerce system To provide the facilities of sharing local knowledge among communities through content management system. To provide the local e-governance system to local community