Building the Virtual Vertical University

Nepal occupies only 0.09% of the world's landmass, but harbors enormous diversity of flora and fauna due to the extreme changes in topography from the lowland Terai region to the High Himalayas. Today, this biodiversity is facing direct threats from rampant and haphazard urbanization. Despite this rich natural heritage, over 5 million youth are still currently unemployed. 

The Vertical University project was born in response to these socio-ecological challenges. Working in collaboration with rural local youth, teachers and farmers, KTK-BELT project aims to protect the scientific and indigenous knowledge found across this corridor spanning Koshi-Tappu Wildlife Reserve to Mount Kanchenjunga. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Nepal and the world, we were forced to rethink our strategy of building the Vertical University. We, then, came up with the idea to build an online portal with indigenous knowledge developed, documented and run by the BELT youth fellows from Eastern Nepal. 

Despite being one of the smallest countries in the world, Nepal is ranked 21st on the global biodiversity index and 11th in Asia. Today, this biodiversity is facing direct threats from rampant urbanization of the countryside resulting in complex socio-ecological changes: increased deagrarianization, growing human density, declining rural livelihoods and growing youth out-migration. 

While environmental conservation is typically imagined as the creation of protected landscapes and national parks, in a context like Nepal where there is no truly ‘natural’ forest, due to the habitation of forests by indigenous people, farmers are direct monitors of biodiversity, with direct knowledge about species decline, seasonal temperature and rainfall changes, and shifts in water resources. Therefore, it is integral to integrate indigenous in conservation.

Nepal is also experiencing a demographic youth bulge with 40% of the population being within the ages of 16 and 40. Nearly 40% of this youth population--more than 5 million young people--are unemployed. Many are migrating overseas to take low-pay, low-skill jobs often in dangerous working conditions in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The long-term sustenance of conservation efforts, therefore, requires the involvement of rural local youth from these biodiversity-rich regions. 

We are interested in building a web-based portal, Virtual Vertical University, that publishes the knowledge of village elders documented by rural youth, particularly women. We will be expanding an already developed BELT Fellows program to recruit and train young at-risk and marginalized youth in technical fields such as para-taxonomists, para-agricultural technicians resulting in increased participation in technical science-related environmental fields. 

Our fellowship program for young women involves training, mentoring and internship opportunities in technical areas, and has been shown to create outstanding young rural conservation leaders in the fields of botany, GIS mapping, media, and sustainable agriculture. Many of these young women overcame marriage pressure and were previously held back by patriarchal norms and household duties imposed on them. Through the fellowship, it was found that the technical STEM related skills were the most powerful way to break gender stereotypes and limitations imposed on women. In doing so, we’ve built a strong indigenous female leadership cohort that is able to conduct field research, monitor conservation related activities, implement conservation projects and also monitor and coordinate finances.

We feel that the protection of biodiversity in Nepal is inextricably linked with the empowerment of women as leaders and decision makers. The establishment of a youth fellowship program to educate and train 24 female youth fellows in conservation will not only reduce pressure on key biodiversity areas, but result in improved skills of women in the community in managing and supporting sustainable enterprises. The project design involves empowerment and leadership building of a cohort of women across the project communities, which will have a powerful ripple effect across the six regions covered across the country. If successful, the project has the potential to influence other regional and national policy planning frameworks for the benefit of all women and girls in Nepal.

Strengthening competency, particularly in STEM and digital literacy, for girls and young women is critical to building the Virtual Vertical University. Our project aims to work with at-risk, marginalized, indigenous rural young women to train them through a course of a two year period in the technical field of conservation. The project will scale our current BELT fellows program from the lower region of the Vertical University to the entire 8-000 meter gradient including six nodes from the plains to the High Himalayas. 

By focusing on the building technical capacity of rural women in the field of conservation, there are multiple ripple effects including economic empowerment and also the protection of biodiversity of their own regions. 

By focusing on selecting fellows across six regions of Nepal, the area of influence will be across the entire gradient. 

A core focus of our youth fellows program will be building the Indigenous Knowledge Portal (IKP) project. The goal is to create a knowledge database of critical ecosystems and indigenous plant diversity of the Eastern Region of Nepal, while working collaboratively with local communities to contribute to biodiversity and local knowledge conservation. By digitizing biodiversity data, a comprehensive ‘cloud’ database, that can be continually updated, will be generated through training and engaging youth and farmers in data collection methods.

This project will achieve this objective through the development of a digital Indigenous Knowledge Portal containing video clips, photography, and audio about local fauna and flora, threatened habitats, and biodiversity-based craft and design, of eastern Nepal. The portal will gather and disseminate the place-based knowledge held by local people across the Eastern Nepal about more than 2,000 plants, 485 birds, 200 fish, and 50 mammals. In order to sensitize rural youth to knowledge held by their elders, the selected youth fellows from six regions will be trained in human ecology mapping, film and photographic documentation by leading conservationists, artists, and designers. A ‘back-end’ team will curate the portal and create six ongoing, off-line interactive exhibits for local communities.

Using DSLR cameras and Adobe Premiere Pro we'll be recording 600 videos of farmers, fisherfolk, yak herders and other local indigenous elders across the vertical region of Nepal. 

Currently, we already have a collection of 75 indigenous knowledge videos shot by six youth fellows. One of the first fellows, Ganga Limbu, has lectured about this indigenous knowledge across conferences around the world, won the Young Naturalist Award and has been featured on CNN for her work. We've seen that engaging women, particularly indigenous from the rural communities, and equipping them with technological skills really allows them to spearhead conservation projects. Ganga has now not only built the initial videos for the portal but also learned how to coordinate larger conservation and education projects. 

Currently, we have a cohort of six fellows from the lower regions of the Vertical University Project. In the next round, the program will engage and integrate 24 youth fellows over the period of three years with an initial cohort of 12 fellows. The first year will encompass trainings in basics of photography, film-making, conservation education related awareness programs. In the second year, six of the best fellows out of the 12 will be selected for the next level of education in program design, coordination, planning, implementation and monitoring. Another cohort of 12 new fellows will be recruited in the second year and in year three again, six of the second cohort will move to the next level of coordination training. Out of the 24 fellows, each region will have four specific fellows working on the building of the indigenous knowledge portal, as well as the conservation related activities in conjunction with the science team of KTK-BELT. 

The twenty four fellows will be leading our field activities on the ground that engages over 2000 stakeholders per region including students, teachers, community forest user group members and government officials to push forward a sustainable and conservation based rural futures. 

The key barrier for implementing this project is funding and access to internet. Once we have the funding and the digital infrastructure, we can reach the most remote corners and build capacity of rural youth. 

We are in the process of applying for funding to build this cohort of fellows. 

For this project, 12 individuals directly work on a full-time basis. In addition, we are working with rural leaders and community members of about 40-50 individuals who will directly be involved in recruiting, training and working with the new cohort of fellows. 

Over the last 4 years, youth fellows of KTK-BELT and its 10 local partner organizations have been documenting and building a library of indigenous knowledge videos. We have been training them in filmmaking and editing. Thus, we would not exactly be starting from scratch and perhaps in one year we would have a vastly expanded library of indigenous films, vignettes, and other content. 

In addition, our team encompasses lawyers, accountants, architects, designers, conservationists and policy-makers who are able to work effectively and efficiently in Nepal's changing context. 

We have been working with funding partners and have also received multi-million dollar multi-year grants from Rainforest Trust, International Conservation for Canada, Patagonia, Otter Funds, Swift Foundation, The Christensen Fund, New Field Foundation, Prince Bernhard Nature Fund and Triodos Foundation. 

In addition to our funding partners, we work with many indigenous led local implementing partners including the Vertical Biodiversity Fund, Yangshila Learning Grounds, Koshi Tappu Learning Grounds, Dhokpya Learning Grounds, Sankhuwasabha Learning Grounds. 

Nationally, we are working in collaboration with the Social Welfare Council along with the five different Rural Municipalities and the Provincial Government to implement the project. 

We are interested in employing rural youth to lead conservation in their own communities. 

We are seeking to turn the Indigenous Knowledge Portal as a web-based platform that would be hosted at http://www.theverticaluniversity.org where anyone in the global community could sign up to become a ‘student’ of this Vertical University by paying a nominal monthly subscription fee ($10/month), which would also help fund our project. 

A highly interactive and dynamic video-based platform would allow these students, young and old, to ‘enter’ the 6 nodes of the Vertical University. In Koshi Tappu, they will meet the Urau and Sardar communities and learn from them about hundreds of resident and migratory birds. In Yangshila, they will wander the Chure forests with the local farmers who will talk about the myriad uses of local medicinal herbs and trees. In Kurule, they will learn how the Majhi community, a traditional fisherfolk ethnicity, subsists on the banks of the Tamur river and how this community has been adapting to droughts from climate change.  In Chauki, they will experience the incredible rhododendron forests. In the Lumbasumba and Papung, they will experience a quarter-million acre wild habitat inhabited only by yak herders, between the 3rd and 5th tallest peaks in the world, the apex of the Vertical University.  The challenge will be to do all of this digitally, through film and livestream.

The revenue from the platform would ensure that all the projects of the Vertical University project can be built and sustained employing 100s of farmers, disadvantaged community members and single mothers. 

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit Nepal and the world, we had to rethink our strategies for implementing and sustaining this project. We were forced to ponder how to share this Vertical University with a global audience and how to engage our own stakeholder communities when we literally could not even be physically present with them. We had to think how to emotionally and intellectually engage within our own team and how to continue our work in non-digital remote landscapes.

‘Shelter in place’ protocols and a complete lockdown on global travel has meant that our long-term fiscal sustainability instrument of eco-tourism had to be paused indefinitely. We came to grips with the reality that most of our donors are small donors who may no longer be in a position to contribute. Donor visits, which were so vital to building trust for financial support, are now impossible. In fact, our entire premise, which is based on direct, place-based contact with indigenous knowledge holders in the field, has been stalled. 

At the same time, in every crisis lies an opportunity for innovation. In fact, struggle itself is a driver of indigenous knowledge production. In our particular context, the coronavirus pandemic may hold certain crucial opportunities when viewed from a certain perspective. With this in mind, KTK-BELT is seeking to develop a web-based platform or the 'Virtual Vertical University' in collaboration with rural indigenous young female fellows from across the Vertical BELT.  

To realize this vision, we require approximately $100,000 (see budget) to support the following costs: hosting of a special interactive website, hiring and training of 24 youth fellows, purchasing of audio-visual and VR camera technologies, and engaging indigenous ‘professors’ from the villages who would be the featured content producers for this platform. 

We are interested in building this web-based Virtual Vertical University in collaboration with female youth fellows by equipping them with trainings in photography, film-making, GIS, research, mapping, and other tools to allow them to document the indigenous knowledge found within the landscape of Eastern Nepal. 

We are advocating for the participation of young girls and women in the field of biodiversity conservation through a fellowship program. The program allows young women to learn about various science and technology related fields and tools.