The winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award and an Internet Hall recipient, Mahabir Pun. He is a Nepali scientist, teacher, social entrepreneur, a social activist and widely known for his extensive work in applying wireless technologies to develop remote areas of the Himalayas. He is the man to introduce Wireless Internet technology in remote areas of Nepal and is known as the first development man in the tech and research field.
“I get angry sometimes. When you are frustrated your moral goes down, but when you are angry your moral goes up.”
Mahabir Pun
Biography of Mahabir Pun
Born | 22 January 1955 Nangi Village, Myagdi District, Nepal |
Nationality | Nepali |
University | University of Nebraska at Kearney |
Known for | Introducing Wireless Internet technology in remote areas of Nepal, National Innovation Center |
Father | Krishna Pun |
Mother | Purbi Pun |
Spouse | Om Maya Pun |
Early Life and Education
Mahabir Pun was born on 22 January, 1994 and raised in Nangi a remote village in the mountainous district Myagdi District of western Nepal. He spent his childhood grazing cattle and sheep and attending a village college besides paper, pencils, textbooks, or certified teachers. But Pun’s existence was modified dramatically when his father, a retired Gurkha, took the extraordinary step of shifting the household to the southern plains of Nepal and investing their whole financial savings in his son’s education. After ending excessive school, Pun labored as an instructor for about 12 years in 4 schools, whilst aiding his brothers’ and sisters’ education. In 1989, after several functions to UK and US universities, he succeeded in gaining a partial scholarship to the University of Nebraska at Kearney, from which he graduated in 1992 with a bachelor’s diploma in Science Education. After graduation, he moved back to his native village, twenty-four years after having left there as a child. It was once in Nangi that he acknowledged the quintessential want for sustainable education, and started to formulate his aim of growing an excessive college to serve as a mannequin for neighbourhood academic and financial development. Pun centred the Himanchal High School with a distinctive centre of attention on pc training and different packages with income-generating capacity. He then went back to the University of Nebraska for a master’s diploma in Educational Administration, which he did in 2001.
Contribution
After earning his master’s diploma in training at the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 2001, Pun returned to his native village of Nangi, in the Myagdi district of Nepal, with a dream: to grant higher instructional possibilities for the youngsters in the far off Himalayan foothills. He upgraded the village faculty and made it no longer solely a supply of education, however additionally the hub of neighbourhood improvement projects. In order to generate cash to run the faculty and create job possibilities for the villagers, he commenced countless income-generating tasks in his village and neighbouring villages such as yak- and rabbit-farming, cheese- and jam- making, a campgrounds operation and many others. But due to the fact, there had been no telephones or modern-day conversation structures of any form in that region, Pun had to stroll for a number of hours from one village to the next, to talk with people.
Pun established the Nepal Wireless Networking Project in 2002 to construct a nearby conversation community for the usage of wi-fi science to join human beings in the Himalayan communities. His purpose was once to carry the Internet to rural schools, promote digital literacy and enhance the first-class of education. However, the project of constructing a wi-fi community in the far-flung Himalayan vicinity the usage of Wi-Fi in early 2000 was once onerous because Wi-Fi was once a rising science lower back then. Also, the authorities of Nepal had banned the importation and use of wi-fi tools due to the fact of war between Maoist rebels and authorities forces there. The villages, which no longer had access to electricity, had by no means viewed computers. In spite of these challenges, Pun was once capable of joining thirteen mountain villages by using 2006 to a Wi-Fi community and the Internet. Since then, he has elevated the community and offerings to over a hundred seventy-five far-off villages in 15 districts of Nepal. Today, these villages use the Internet for e-learning, e-healthcare, neighbourhood e-commerce, neighbourhood discussions, cash transfers and climate monitoring.
National Innovation Center
Mahabir Pun led the initiative to register a nonprofit employer named “Rashtriya Abiskar Kendra ” in 2012, broadly termed as National Innovation Center in English. The foremost goal to set up the Innovation and invention centre in accordance with Mahabir Pun is to foster lookup and trends for the monetary improvement of the country. Mahabir labored with the authorities for funding of the task which did not now take place and due to the fact that in July 2016, Mahabir is jogging a crowdfunding marketing campaign to fund National Innovation efforts. National Innovation Center crowdfunding marketing campaign plans to construct a 10MW hydropower station, which in accordance with the initiative would sustainably fund it’s going for walks cost. Mahabir has acquired social enchantment with his donation of land for the National Innovation Center.
Worldwide Recognition
In 2002, Pun used to be elected Ashoka Fellow through the Ashoka Foundation, the international affiliation of main social entrepreneurs. The Foundation mentioned his contribution to overcoming the geographical isolation of many of the communities in which he works, with a new concept that should be replicated in different geographically remote areas with few academic or monetary opportunities.
In 2004, he acquired the Overall Social Innovations Award from the Institute for Social Inventions.
In 2007, Mahabir Pun was awarded the Magsaysay Award, viewed with the aid of some to be the Nobel Prize of Asia, The pun is one of 5 Nepalis to get hold of the Magsaysay Award, and the sole one to acquire the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership.
Later in 2007, the University of Nebraska awarded him an honorary diploma as Doctor of Humane Letters for his extremely good work for his country, Nepal.
Mahabir Pun used to be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2014 and was once awarded the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award through the Internet Society.
In 2021 Pun introduced a TV Show Aaviskar on Nepal’s first 4K TV channel Galaxy 4K.
Like the title ‘Mahabir,’ his contribution to the improvement of science and innovation for Nepal and Nepali is at the pinnacle ‘Mahan’. Mahabir Pun is famous in the course of Nepal with this unforgettable life-changing fulfillment in the direction of the rural areas of our nation.
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