Accountability Lab Nepal has selected four accountapreneurs for the 2020 cohort of their Accountability Incubator program. They’re looking at projects spanning women empowerment and citizen engagement.

Sumi Limbu is a Graduate student of Arts and Social Work, a compassionate learner, an activist who believes in the power of change and equality, and a lover of poetry and storytelling. She is one of the leader/changemakers of EmpoweHER 2018 (idea incubation leadership program initiated by Ujyalo Foundation) where her idea “SAKHI”, an awareness campaign about menstruation through comic books, received seed funding. She strongly believes that through education and working from the ground root level, one day we will be able to end deep-rooted patriarchy in society. Sumi is currently working at United World Schools Nepal as a Communication and Knowledge Management Officer. Through the incubator she intends to create a comic book exploring different social issues such as menstruation, comprehensive sexual education, gender and sexuality. The aim is for these comic books to help young people gain a better understanding of their bodies and their rights, and also act as an advocacy tool.

Pratik Kunwar is a social entrepreneur and development professional. He is currently the Managing Director at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Nepal. He is also a Global Shaper, a South Asia Connect participant (2018) and a Future Global Leaders program fellow (2018). Through the incubator, he plans to develop Shaasan, an initiative that makes actionable information accessible to the public, and their concerns immediately reachable to concerned political representatives. They do this by creating a decentralized cloud infrastructure with the oversight and analytics of a centralized civic data hub. A citizen can hold public officials accountable for their promises (e.g. more jobs), activities in their constituency (e.g. fixing roads, or report crime), and whether their suggestions (e.g. climate initiatives) are taken seriously or not, in real time. Through this, they promote ordinary citizens to become active shapers and collaborators of governmental policy at all levels of government, and as a public scorecard, they are increasing accountability and the responsiveness of governments to public concerns.

Nishant Khanal is engaged in economic research, public policy, regional trade and development economics in South Asia. He has experience working on regional integration, poverty alleviation, leadership development and fund-raising in South Asia. He is a cofounder of Alankar Innovations, a digital media and social innovation platform that works on disaster, media and citizen engagement. Through the incubator he plans to develop NDR, an open forum to review development discourse in Nepal. It will be an open knowledge platform aimed at offering a critique on development practice and discussions in the country. The development initiatives in Nepal will be discussed and  suggestions made to make the initiatives more effective and accountable. It will produce cross-thematic field narratives from experts and bring grassroots’ voices on, furthering the development wisdom in Nepal. NDR aims to monitor Federalism and Local Governance, Periodic country review on SDGs initiatives, Gender and Social Inclusion, Review of Nepal’s economic development initiatives etc.

Rakesh Prasad Chaudhary is a journalist and social activist. He has worked as a freelance journalist for various local media outlets and is the founder of Visit Jaleshwar, a project aimed at empowering local youth by training them on digital literacy and craft production. As a part of Visit Jaleshwar, Rakesh’s wants to work on women empowerment through the incubator by providing women a platform to produce and sell the Mithila arts and crafts they produce. He also intends to engage youth in this platform for digital marketing through social media.

KatieFuhs