Namaste
I am Anu Pokharel from Nepal. It has almost been a month since I joined Edgeryders. It is wonderful to discuss and connect with like-minded people who together want to make the world a better place to live. I am very much optimistic that we can make a difference and create positive activities.
Does your work define you? Mine was not. I was trapped inside four office walls along with my frustration and no matter what I did, it was never good enough. I gathered all my courage and decided to quit. Sure, it could have created trouble as courage does not pay my bills, but my family supported me to the most. I also consider myself lucky to be born in a not so economically troubled family. I have met many people who hate their job but have no option than to tolerate it.
Developing countries like Nepal have so many distinct problems. The three problems which I want to address the most are: lack of resources, lack of trust in the potential of the young and lack of alternative thinking. Nepal somehow never tried to utilize its local resources and always relied on what it doesnât have. Itâs always about the grass being greener on the other side. Trust in young minds is rare, even big organizations seek only big names but not big ideas. According to their own assumptions, âyoung people lack commitmentâ.
But as they say, âcrisis creates opportunityâ. Coffee Arabica can be grown in most hilly parts of Nepal. Nepal is an agricultural country which has always followed traditional farming. I was born and raised in Kathmandu but my dad is from Arghakachi (a small rural village with very good potential for coffee farming). The land in Arghakachi is mostly used to cultivate rice and barley. I would like to introduce coffee farming to the farmers of this village. Coffee farming tends to require less effort and earn more profit. Due to lack of awareness, farmers just donât know about the possibilities of harvesting coffee.
It is very hard to find fresh Nepalese coffee in a local market. There are a few brands but it is very expensive for local people to buy it because of unfair trade. Farmers donât get an appropriate price either, which discourages them from coffee farming. It is a necessity to create a market for the farmers where they can get a fair price.
Project Idea âOpenVillage House Kathmanduâ
I really liked the concept of âOpenVillage Housesâ as it will bring people together. Most of the young people of Kathmandu lack connection with the outer world. I went to Vietnam in July where I decided to stay at hostel rather than a hotel, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The hostel offers a bed and breakfast service, along with their own coffee shop where they sell local Vietnamese coffee, like Coffee Saigon.
The hostel offers long term stay both for foreign and Vietnamese students on a shared kitchen basis. I really liked the concept of it, as this way Vietnamese people can get connected to foreign people and together they can learn and share their knowledge inclusively and enjoy cultural diversity. I think this is a very practical way of learning.
OpenVillage House Kathmandu will be a co-working and co-housing space along with a coffee shop and an own coffee manufactory. The idea is also to create a connection hub where people from different backgrounds and culture can connect over ideas and build a network for the greater good.
How it will operate
I want to initiate an idea which incorporates both a co-housing / co-working space along with a coffee roastery and a coffee shop.
- Co-Housing
- Co-Working
- Coffee Shop
- Coffee Roastery
Co-Housing
Kathmandu is the capital city of Nepal. Lots of students come to Kathmandu to continue their further studies. As rent in the city area with adequate facilities is expensive, students have a hard time finding a reasonable place to stay for the long term. In Nepal, lots of colleges donât have student dormitories or hostels. Students have a very hard time finding a space to rent. Nepal is an interesting country to travel if you are an adventurous person. Most tourists are here for trekking to Everest Base Camp, but Nepal also welcomes lots of foreign students from abroad for short / long term research or volunteer purposes. In my own experience, the foreign students also have a hard time finding appropriate housing to stay for the long term. Both problems can be addressed and solved with the OpenVillage House. We could accommodate both types of students by providing a proper place to stay with a shared kitchen. We can charge an appropriate rent along with utility costs for Internet, electricity and drinking water, in an exciting environment. This will help local students build networks with students from all over the world and share their local knowledge.
Co-Working
Co-working spaces are very new to Nepal. In Kathmandu, there are only a couple co-working spaces. Since start-ups donât have their own office, co-working spaces are popular among young people. The co-working space can also be ideal for students, and a hub to meet and discuss ideas.
Coffee Shop
The Open House will have its own coffee shop which will serve freshly roasted coffee at an affordable price to local people. Coffee culture is getting famous in Nepal. The coffee shop will also be creative about utilizing local food items as snacks alongside the coffee. This can help to market Nepalese coffee that is roasted on-site. Also, the coffee shop can employ local people.
Coffee Roastery
The coffee beans will be collected from villages (Palpa, Gulmi) including Arghakachi, using direct trade connections. We will use hulling and sorting machines to process the coffee into clean green beans, which allows us to buy even from very small-scale farmers who canât process it on their own, and relieves other farmers from the work-intensive and low-wage activity of sorting the beans. Afterwards, the coffee beans will be roasted and both sold locally and made export ready on site (Packing, Labeling so on).
Exporting roasted coffee is not usually done, but works due to the special circumstances in Nepal: amounts smaller than a full container load can only be transported by air cargo to Europe, which is expensive, but happens to be fast enough for roasted coffee to arrive fresh at consumers (namely, in about a week).
The coffee will also be exported to European Union countries, utilizing the âfair and directâ marketing scheme and the experience @matthias collected about that (see here). This needs innovative solutions for marketing and logistics â because to ensure that, for fairness, more than half of the final sales price goes to the coffee farmers, marketing canât happen in Europe with European wages. Instead, we will experiment with ways to have the marketing activities and nearly all of the packaging and handling done inside Nepal. Our first bright idea for this is to market to cafĂ©s in European countries. This has several advantages: they value quality over price, they accept commercial communication in English, they need amounts that make national parcel shipment (after air cargo) feasible, and they have a good use for the unique story of fair and direct trade that the coffee comes with. We would include leaflets and info material with the coffee that they can show to their guests, this way acting as a free marketing hub as guests might also start to order the same coffee.
For logistics, an innovative idea to reduce the price markup is that we will prepare the coffee inside Nepal for national parcel shipment inside Europe â basically, order, pay and print parcel labels over Internet. This way, the only activity needed by partners in Europe is to pay customs, unpack the air cargo shipment and hand the contained parcels to a national parcel carrier.
Finally, because of the direct trade connection without intermediaries, it will also be possible to sell this Nepali coffee in the attached coffee shop for a price that is affordable for locals in Nepal (ca. 900 NPR/kg instead of 1700-2000 NPR/kg). This should help to quickly become a well-known name here in Kathmandu.
Any Suggestions?