Breaking the vicious circle of poverty in the Nepal Himalayas: 04.03.2015 at ETH Zurich

Lessons learnt in 20 years of bridging the gap between community development, applied research and investment

Alex Zahnd

Dr. Alex Zahnd, a Swiss engineer, is a visiting scholar at University of California, San Diego and a visiting professor at Kathmandu University, Nepal. He wrote his PhD thesis on the role of renewable energy technology in holistic community development at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia. He is a Corresponding Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) and a Member of the Board of Directors of the International Solar Energy Society.

Alex has lived and worked for more than 20 years in Nepal. He developed a new community development approach which has served as the basis for holistic community development projects in 29 high-altitude villages in Nepal. In 2002, he co-founded the non-governmental organization “Rural Integrated Development Services–Nepal“ (RIDS–Nepal, http://www.rids-nepal.org) and in 2013 its Swiss sister organization RIDS–Switzerland (http://www.rids-switzerland.org). Through these two NGOs, Alex Zahnd is currently implementing holistic community development projects in 11 villages in the high-altitude districts of Humla and Jumla, in the North-West
of Nepal.

In this talk, he will summarize some of the key lessons he learned how contextualized technologies, educational tools and infrastructures
developed according to the local communities’ self-identified needs can break the chains of extreme poverty through a constructive crosscultural dialogue and awaken educational and economic activities. He will also illustrate that a long-term and holistic perspective of all involved stakeholders, especially in the project partnership and in funding, is one of the most critical success factors of development projects and still deserves a wider recognition as a best practice.

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