Mr. Ram Sapkota is the founder of Tukee Nepal. Being born in Jyamrung, which is a remote village in the midwest part of Nepal, he belonged to a family of farmers. He saw poverty and the impact of poverty on children, adults, and any grown person very closely as he himself belonged to a poor family. Education was not easily accessible due to remoteness and economic condition, but that did not stop Ram to pursue higher education.
He had seen how due to lack of education. Ram with the motive to bring change in society, tried pursuing the villagers to invest their time in something productive. He supported local women, and helped them raise their voice against the injustice they were facing. This was the first step to stand for someone in need and eventually, this led him to follow the path of humanitarian activities.
Eventually, he became a trekking guide and while continuing private home-based education. After becoming a guide he wanted to give something back to society, especially to poor families in the village who were not able to send their children to school and were going through everything he had to go through during his childhood. With some portion of his earnings he started to support children to continue their education. Ram encouraged parents from his village to send children to school by paying education expenses and fees.
As a trekking guide Ram naturally met a lot of foreigners. He informed many of them about his ongoing projects, and received help as well. Finally in 2005 he started Tukee Nepal Samaj.
Once while working as a guide he met a kind couple and Journalist from Sweden (Ewa Söderberg, Dan Söderberg and Mikael Person). He explained to them about his projects for upliftment of quality of life of villagers, so they were eager to visit his village. After they visited the village and experienced the condition of locality where children had to study on the open ground because of the old and damaged school building, they decided to support Ram and his initiatives. They were very impressed with his activities and started their own supporting organization back in Sweden.
The village Tukee Nepal is working on was poorly equipped in terms of infrastructure, sanitary, school and electricity. With Ram’s initiation and support from well wishers the conditions of the village are improved. Instead of only helping children to go to school Ram started village development projects like building toilets and a health center that was affordable to everyone.
He started community treks with help of which he would find new tourist destinations off the beaten path so that both tourists and locals would benefit from incoming tourists. The tourists could explore new and beautiful destinations while the locals were provided the opportunity to earn and get involved in tourism-related businesses promoting local products, which eventually results in an increase in quality of life.
