One of my foreign friends, who works in an INGO in Nepal, asked me an interesting question. “How many Mahabir Pun do you have in your country?” His was a serious question but I was clueless. I simply said “I know Mahabir Pun and his great works, but I don’t know who others like him also involved in similar activities”. He smirked. “Well, your answer is not entirely wrong” he heaved a deep breath and continued “If there are a few more people like Mahabir Pun, the face of rural Nepal will get a complete transformation.”

Mahabir Pun was born in Nangi village, Myagdi district, in 1954. This is a village dominated by the population of Pun Magar. The main occupation of the people here is agriculture, but most of the young boys here prefer to join in the armed services. Migration rate is also equally high. Improvement of financial condition encourages families to migrate nearby city like Pokhara or Kathmandu.

Mahabir Pun spent his childhood in Nangi village. He attended a village school where education was rudimentary. Apart from school study, his job was to graze cattle, which he never enjoyed. He always wanted to have better education which was a distant thing in his village. The school lacked all basic infrastructures required for students.

Meanwhile, his father, serving in the British Army, migrated to Chitwan. This made the boy much happier. In Chitwan, Mahabir began attending a better school, which had everything that Mahabir dreamed of in his village school. He passed high school with flying colours. Soon after finishing the high school, in order to support the growing need of his family, he became a teacher. He remained in the teaching profession for over a decade until an opportunity fell on his way to study a bachelor’s degree at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

After a long stay abroad he returned homeland in 1992. He arrived in his village with a renewed energy and vitality. He wanted to bring a new lease of life to the people of his village. The first thing he did was establishing a school and began teaching there. While teaching to young prodigies, he realized they lagged behind the city students. Hence, he determined to introduce computer education to all students. Besides computer education, he also wanted to connect his village to rest of the world. He began communicating with his foreign friends and some organizations. “I still remember the hardship I had undergone in those days. I would walk six hours to reach the nearest highway then to Pokhara. All in all it would take two days to reach Pokhara, just to check emails. I would stay a few days in Pokhara and contact my friends. It was really a tiresome job, but in the end my efforts bore fruits as some of my Australian friends donated me a few used computers. Now we had computers but no electricity! This made me to set up two small hydro generators at a nearby stream. That subsequently enabled to power on the computers” said Pun with a smile on his face