Prasha Lama is the Founder and President of AAROH, a social organization dedicated to advocating for quality education and sustainable living in Nepal’s most remote regions. A consummate professional with a profound passion for social justice, she is currently a PhD scholar at Tribhuvan University.
Following the completion of her Bachelor’s in Business Administration, Prasha took a bold detour from the traditional corporate path. While expectations pointed toward an MBA or an international career, she chose to dedicate her life to understanding and serving the communities in Nepal that required the most support. She began her journey on the ground, volunteering in orphanages and dedicating her time to Shree Buddhodaya Primary School in Doramba, Ramechhap.
During her fieldwork in the remote village of Bodal, Prasha identified a critical barrier to national development: an outdated education system lacking child-friendly amenities, modern teacher training, and a motivating environment.
Refusing to simply observe, she took immediate action. Prasha designed a child-friendly curriculum and launched Project Sunaulo Bhawishya (Golden Future). This initiative successfully introduced modern teaching methodologies, improved school infrastructure, provided uniforms, and cultivated a nurturing, healthy atmosphere designed to foster intellectual growth and daily school attendance.
The success of this early grassroots work served as the catalyst for founding AAROH. Today, equipped with extensive experience in nonprofit management, fieldwork, and fundraising, as well as her background as a certified legal trainer, Prasha leads the organization with unwavering dedication.
Through AAROH and her ongoing doctoral research on women-owned enterprises, her overarching vision is to tap into women’s empowerment in rural Nepal and advocate for sustainable living. Prasha operates on the fundamental belief that every child deserves a loving home and a chance for a better future, and that empowering local communities is the key to achieving it.
Education is the most powerful weapon which one can use to change the world. Inspired by such thought, AAROH is dedicated towards taking positive actions to transform the lives of underprivileged children and women through education by offering them hope of better life.
“Our experiences so far offered us an important lesson on ways to approach our goal of providing better education to the marginalized sector of the social strata”.
We deeply feel that there has to be a positive intervention in the prevalent trend and perception of education system in the disadvantaged sector. Almost every effort of our organization is initiated with the belief that no matter how trivial our efforts, it could make a huge impact in the long run.
We are thankful to all our supporters who believed in our endeavor. We are also grateful to our donors and partners for their unfailing support and cooperation.
— Prasha Lama —
Founder & Organizer
AAROH “A rise of hope”
Once a wise man said, “It takes a special kind of stupid to start a nonprofit on your own.” Perhaps, it is so. It, however, is also true that to be that special kind of stupid, one needs as much dedication and conscience; perhaps even more so. Through my long and rather onerous journey of establishing a dynamic organization that chaperons the educational needs of rural communities, I have always committed it to my memory that no nonprofit has ever succeeded without persistence and a continuous journey forward.
The name that I came up with for my organization was AAROH. This name is a special dedication to my continuous effort to amalgamate more rural masses into the melting pot of development and modernization. It is a rise of hope- the hope of deprived children toward a better tomorrow and the hope of equal opportunities for the underprivileged.
Undoubtedly, it wasn’t easy to get to where AAROH is now, and the high road was never really straight. Like every other parent in the Nepalese community, mine expected me to finish my MBA and join a decent 9-to-5 job. All my close friends were starting to depart to various countries abroad. At this point, I began contemplating my plans for the future very seriously, and that is precisely the point where I realized that my passion lay neither in earning a dozen bucks in some tedious career nor in uploading “oh-so-interesting” foreign travel pictures on social media, as is sadly the current trend. I became cognizant of my devotion to serve humanity, to be a ray of hope to indigent children and impoverished women in my own country, Nepal.
Fast forward through all the strenuous struggles: four years later, stepping into 2018, I have connected with hundreds of people, raised modest amounts of money on several occasions by inspiring others through my unpretentious social service, and spread my vision a little bit further with every step I take. I can now proudly and honestly say that starting a nonprofit was the best decision of my life.
When you tell someone about a great idea, it will often cause them to think about it, and in some cases, talk about it. That is a good thing, too. But what is really difficult is to convert ideas into action, and then that action into money—which is exactly what you need as an organization to survive.
Given those preceding realities, I must attempt to answer the questions: Is my organization sustaining at its best? Is my organization successful?
My answer is no. I say this with pain in my heart, with pride in what I have been able to accomplish, and with a precise understanding of how to create greater impact. For the type and size of my organization, the amount of time devoted to unsuccessful fundraising really does not make sense. Waking up every morning and going to bed every night worrying about whether fundraising objectives are met takes its toll. What it does is create immense pressure; if objectives are not met, the pace of growth slows, and the mission drifts because NGOs need money for any operation. There is no direct correlation between the work and income. NGOs compete with the private sector and government for talent, and they simply do not often have the resources to level the playing field.
For many of us, it might be interesting to read the proclamations of failed nonprofits. But they are inherently melancholic and disheartening—as if the nonprofit leader is falling on their sword, accepting the shame of defeat. They say things like, “We had a good run,” “Thanks for the memories,” or “It was fun while it lasted.” These final newsletters only serve to strengthen the understanding, and perhaps the reality, that our nonprofit sector is weak. You are putting your ideas out into the world, and the world is tearing them apart. Your ideas are like your ugly child who is, all the same, so beautiful to you because only you know all the labor you put into breathing life into that child, which the world now labels “ugly.”
However, there has always been a lingering question in my mind since starting my organization. Yet, unfortunately, after those four years, the question is even more difficult to answer. In my humble opinion, success in the nonprofit sector is a function of luck more than anything else. Creativity, hard yet smart work, and intentional networking are also significant factors. In any case, my organization has had an exceptional amount of success within four years: receiving numerous small grants ranging from $500 to $130,000, executing more than 30 programs in rural Nepal, running three ongoing projects, and winning a couple of awards for innovative programs. However, this mild success still does not answer whether the organization is sustaining at its best.
All odds being equal, there has been a mushroom growth of NGO in Nepal which is just a little puny dot in this big world. According to the Social Welfare Council, there were 39,759 NGOs registered between 1977 and 2014 in Nepal. The competition sometimes gives sense with 100 percent certainty that you will fail and your organization would not exist within five years time.
There are many challenges I faced and I’m hardly qualified to enumerate all of them. A lot of NGOs are doing amazing work solving hard, real world problems selflessly and silently. The main challenge NGOs face is people- people who don’t like change, people who have a false sense of what giving means and sometimes, people who just don’t care.
The biggest challenge for me was finding right people willing to work for extended hours with less payment compared to other organization since there were less resources and funds because in the beginning, everything was self funded with my own savings. Hiring experienced personnel was beyond my imagination. Also because of the low brand power, college interns showed up and left within no time.
Hiring a graphic designer, web developer, an editor was beyond my meager budget so I started learning through Google and YouTube. I had to improvise more often than not, and be my own master all through. With low resources I learned video editing, graphic designing, proposal writing and even website designing within a span of one year.
In such a sink or swim situation with a hope of dedication and relentless efforts, I had a feeling that all this drudgery would one day inevitably bear fruits. My respectable mentor always says “Keep climbing up”. And that is exactly what I did- I kept climbing forward, I kept striving to achieve more and to serve more.
Designing a sustainable project was the most challenging part for me. The implementation of this sustainable program is slowly progressing day by day, and its impact is clearly visible. The operation expenses of my office don’t burden me anymore. Over the next few years, I will be transferring the momentum that my organization has created to another level, and the weight of my organization will be shared with others. My dreams to tap into women’s development in rural parts of Nepal, to introduce the light of education among destitute children, and to advocate for sustainable living will definitely come true.
