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Question I answer about the Gap Year Project

What is my Gap year course project? What problem am I trying to solve? What other solutions are there? Who do I think this will benefit? Why will the customers buy into this project? Who will finance it, and how will the logistics work out? And then the actual meat and potatoes of the idea, which is discuss classes.

Many students in Kathmandu attend bridge course after class 10 to prep for +2 or A levels. It’s unclear how useful the classes are in terms of academic preparation for the entrance classes. That might not be the primary reason for enrollment, the main selling point for those classes might be the added structure to the three or four month gap.

The students find a place to meet new people, make new friends, and explore new opportunities. Parents know that their children are not bored, and they’re not getting in trouble, since they’re attending classes. They must wake early and live a structured, disciplined life, and do homework of sorts.

On a different note, tens of thousands of Nepali students leave Nepal to study abroad every year. Often, they will take a gap year or as they apply to foreign colleges and wait for the responses. In many cases, they are on their own doing whatever they’ve heard from other people in an attempt to get accepted abroad. In other cases, they are enrolled in language classes or standardized test courses to get better at them. Any long-term structured approach to applying to foreign colleges and universities is limited.

On the one hand, this age, 18 to 20 years of age, is a time for exploration and knowing yourself and making friends. On the other hand, without some sort of structure or some sort of guidance, people tend to get into trouble. And even people who want structure don’t have a place that gives them structure. Their parents would probably find it more ideal if students were doing something similar as they were doing in plus two and school. If there was some structured program instead of just classes and so forth that would help their kids apply for abroad programs, and therefore, I present the Gap year project.

The idea is to provide lightly structured classes around individual discovery, expansion, personal intellectual horizons, adventure, art, craft, history, etc., that people historically didn’t have the opportunity to explore. In addition to providing classes structured around applying to foreign colleges and universities, the idea is to prepare the students not just for getting accepted into the universities, but also thriving after they go to foreign colleges and leading and guiding others when they are in colleges. Eventually, the idea is to create a group of well-tuned leaders and guides and intellectually high achievers or doers. Who can take charge and set the path forward, should they so choose, but even if not, people who are already socially and intellectually and experientially quite advanced and mature and have a very broad knowledge and experience base.

The nature of class and experiences I want to give them, I want to make that quite diverse. On the one hand, yes, of course, they need to take their GRE classes and their SAT classes and personal essay and so forth. But they also need their non-profit and service stuff. We can have people choose their domain of interest and their own social service projects and execute them. That will be a class.

Have them take bigger risks and understand business by running a business challenge within the group and funding the best idea 30, 40, 50,000 rupees or 100,000 rupees. And allow them to run their business for a couple of months. We can run apprentice-like business challenges. We assign leadership and community building classes. That is maybe 30 percent theory and 70 percent practice. The practice would be in terms of organizing other people to sign up to their non-profit project or getting people to volunteer in their own project or the business plan where they need to sell to people. Or coordinating with other groups and so forth. The idea is to give them structured understanding. Structured, formal understanding of what to do as a leader and a community builder and have that be immediately working in practice through the course of their projects. We will be clear that the goal of teaching them community building and leadership skills is so that they can create a community for themselves and lead communities and help other people in their future lives. So, community and leadership projects is one thing. Non-profit management and running is another. The other idea is running business and learning rejection out in the street by reaching out to people, embarrassing themselves, and learning that rejection comes easy, is not a big deal. The purpose is your goal. The other is learning business skills and interactions.

I have a couple of more ideas. One would be theater courses where the group would meet together, run a show, including all the technical parts, and display it at a community event elsewhere. Another idea would be a history lesson of the valley or the people and actively participating in it by going to interview people and recording it somewhere.

An idea I want to explore more is around modules. Like creating, I don’t know, two to three months modules. If there are many classes and people can switch classes across different terms, there’s going to be two or three terms. Then, one of the ideas that would be so cool is to encourage them to travel. And either self-funded or self-organized or organized with the group. And make that travel somehow a part of their growth and learning as well. For example, if I can mix this with my national parks volunteering idea. Could these folks go to national parks and explore, but also help carry trash down from the mountains? Or could we find a way for these folks to actually organize these projects? And the other non-profit projects? Maybe they can start taking a hit on my school for elderly project and doing some of the logistics around that. In any case, the idea is to engage them in real projects that matter that force them to talk to and interact with other young people and old people and members of the community.

Finally, what I want them to learn the most is for them to be engaged within their local communities and local political situation. They must understand that the way to make any change is not to disengage and run away from it, but interact with it and change anything in the smallest way possible. Here, maybe the possibility of the trash collection idea comes. Maybe these students can run awareness campaigns on waste segregation in their local communities in collaboration with the municipalities.

So many potential exciting ideas. The way I think this might get funded is by talking to Umesh Sir, who runs Intel Institute and a college that Lisa Portal studied in. I don’t remember. He has made a lot of money from Intel Institute by basically creating a new category that didn’t exist. I wonder if he would be interested in creating yet another category? Additionally, I also wonder if he would be interested in my framing of the education approach, which is less mass market: “Give me all the money and you’re squeezed like a chicken in a small room,” and more of a premium experience.

Some other questions discussing might be, how much money to charge them? 15, 20, 30,00085? Maybe 20,000 a month for a year is 2.5 lakh, like 50,00086? Maybe three lakh? But if it kind of guarantees-ish that your child gets accepted at a foreign university and performs there really well. That’s already our. Actually, we need a solid sales pitch for the parents as well on how to execute it. Why their child should join the Gap year project instead of doing it themselves. Why they should spend so much money?

Additionally, I wonder if we can keep the plan a little bit flexible around student interest. What if a lot of the students are really into sports? Everybody is into sports. And nobody wants to do history or drama, for example. Is there a way we can incorporate all the original goals of the program that I outlined well with their interests, which is sports?

Additionally, I want to think a lot more on community building and how food is such an important part of community building. Maybe they do cooking classes? Maybe they run cooking classes for the dads? That’s my cooking classes for the dad’s idea. Or maybe learn to cook and serve people in an orphanage or elderly people’s homes. Something to that effect. That’s just one idea I was throwing out.

So if somebody’s paying 30,000 rupees and there’s 25 people, that’s 7.5 lakhs a month. Something else I need to ask myself is, how do we make the numbers work out? We need a place. We need some stuff. Can Intel Institute staff support us? Can we get good teachers for that price? Can we make exciting, engaging programs for that price? Can we collaborate with any sponsors who might be interested in it? Is running basically a guide to applying abroad viable with all of the other programs as well in terms of price? Or maybe if it’s going to be so viable, maybe everybody is going to going to do it.

The main sales pitch is not “You/your child will get amazing universities”. The idea is that, “Oh, you’re going to go to an amazing/or some foreign university anyway soon, so what if, in the meantime, you had a group of similar friends to apply with who are also having an amazing time? What if you had people to guide you, but also prepare you for a lot more things?”

I really like that framing, gotta work on that more!

If this is a really good idea, how can we do this if Umesh Sir says yes? What do I do next? Which point person do I have in Kathmandu that can help coordinate this? I think if I can get Abhishek Kaji to coordinate this, it would be great.

It won’t take a lot of his time.

My side goal is to create a more cohesive leadership program for young people around the age group. The main goal is to create well-trained, honest, visionary leaders who are not cynical and whose goal is always to bring about positive change and not compromise the system from the start.