Nepal vs COVID-19

At 4:30 AM on a gloomy Friday morning in Frankfurt, Aman Bhattarai gets on a conference call with his colleagues to identify final technical issues before he steps into the virtual stage.

For the next three days, he will be coordinating more than 60 young people from Nepal and 20 international experts from around the world to take part in NEPALVSCOVID19, a Virtual Design Thinking challenge aimed at building ideas on Nepal’s post-pandemic recovery in the themes of Community, Education, Business and Public Health.

Designed off the globally acclaimed Design Thinking methodology, the challenge was organised 17-19 April by The Impact Week in collaboration with the Lufthansa Group and King’s College in Nepal. Since its inception in 2015, Impact Week continues to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging economies as the basis for sustainable growth. This was the second Impact Week in Nepal.

“To have young Nepali minds from around the world collaborate with top mentors locally and internationally to design creative solutions to the problems brought about by COVID-19 is a humbling and gratifying experience,” says Narottam Aryal of King’s College, Nepal.

The impact of COVID-19 on Nepal’s businesses was one of the themes participants worked on over the three days. For a nation that relies on remittance and tourism, the impact on the economy is far-reaching. According to the Asian Development Bank, Nepal might lose up to $322 million due to the impacts of COVID-19 — especially at risk are small-and medium scale enterprises, and more than 400 start-ups currently based in Nepal.

In the latest submission to the Ministry of Finance, top Nepali start-ups say they will face great pressure if businesses do not revive within the next 4-6 weeks. Most said they would be out of business.

One of the teams working on the challenge came up with an innovative solution to bridge households with local service providers to ease the delivery of goods and services. Creating an online inventory would not only help households with no immediate contacts to suppliers in the time of a lockdown but would also create added market opportunities to businesses currently struggling because of the pandemic.

“Based on our research interviews, we identified a mis-match between business providers and customers,” says Bijana Pantha, currently pursuing an MBA at Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University. “Accordingly, we decided to design an online directory of businesses based on their location to fill this gap. The ultimate belief is that such a solution would be beneficial not just during but also outside the times of a pandemic.”

The winning idea was on public health from a group of Nepali students studying at Jacobs University in Bremen in Germany. After consultations with health experts and medical students from over half a dozen hospitals across the country, their solution aims to allocate human resources in a more effective manner by training medical students on how to communicate sensitive information to villagers, promote hygiene habits and spread knowledge on COVID-19 backed up by scientific research.

According to the needs and scale of the crisis, these ‘Corona Warriors’ would be deployed in disease hot spots. With the doctor to patient ratio in rural Nepal as low as 1:150,000, the idea would be even more relevant if the pandemic worsens. The team has successfully launched its website and is seeking to implementing the solution in real-life.

“Utilising the lockdown as an opportunity, we have witnessed that virtual collaboration can equally enable to foster innovation entrepreneurship across the world,” says Aman Bhattarai, a senior consultant at Lufthansa Group and the initiator of NEPALVSCOVID19.

More than just the ideas, what was remarkable was the energy, enthusiasm and collaboration shown by the community in confronting the global threat. For some, this unique virtual social experience was an opportunity to socialise and reach out during lockdowns. For others it provided emotional and social support at a time when the world is going through a mental health crisis. For many Nepalis abroad, it was a welcome opportunity to engage in an exercise to come up with ideas to fight the pandemic.

“I had a rare opportunity to contribute to Nepal’s response against COVID-19. I felt a sense of belonging,” says Shuvabi Pradhan, also at Jacobs University and a member of the winning team. “Waking up at 5AM because of the time difference was worth it.”

Participants agreed that platforms like these make it possible to design workshops with cross-cultural collaboration that seeks solutions to the challenges Nepal will face post-pandemic, while providing a sense of belonging and community spirit.

Watch video of the winning idea: