Update from Nepal
Recently, one of the founding members of OLE Nepal received what many consider the “Nobel Prize of Asia”. Mahabir Pun received “The 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award ” for his outstanding leadership in Community Development in Nepal. He is being recognized for connecting remote villages in Nepal to the Internet using inexpensive wireless networks. 
Mahabir did not just use this network for Internet access, he leveraged it to provide education, medical advice, and telephone service for people living in rural areas. One of the important projects of Mahabir’s organization, Nepal Wireless is to develop and collect educational materials and put those materials in the intranet so that the teachers and students will have access to the materials anytime when they need them. Nepal Wireless, has already provided Internet access and innovative services to a number of rural communities in Nepal.
While Mahabir is known for his work with computers and the Internet, Mahabir considers himself an educator. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and then returned to his home village of Nangi in 1992 to establish a community high school. Prior to that, Nangi had no local high school. Mahabir initially started Nepal Wireless to connect Himanchal School to the Internet. It later expanded to provide a number of important services to the larger community.
Out of many, the biggest problems Nepal Wireless has faced are the relatively high cost of computers and lack of high-quality, digital education materials. In fall of 2006, Mahabir began collaborating with Rabi Karmacharya, Saurav Dev Bhatta, and Bryan Berry to address these problems. In July 2007, they formed OLE Nepal in partnership with OLE Inc. OLE Nepal is currently working towards being a full fledged Non-Government Organization (NGO) in Nepal.
OLE Nepal and Nepal Wireless are joining hands to bring exciting educational content and application to all children in the country by utilizing their extensive experience in implementing community based technology in rural schools of Nepal.
