Project Access

originated around the village of rural, remote areas. This picture has dramatically changed within the last 10 years because of emigration of mostly youth from remote areas and villages to urban areas to seek better financial opportunities, educational opportunities, and and a modern lifestyle. This creates a centralization toward major cities like Pokhara, Gorkha, Dhahran, Bhaktapur, but mainly to Kathmandu. This means that there is a depopulation of the villages and that there is a greater demand for products in the major cities and less hands in the villages to produce what is demanded in the highly populated areas. This situation is now so advanced that it is necessary for Nepal to import a lot of the staple food items such as rice, tomatoes, and so on. This is, of course, an unsustainable situation not only because Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world— ranked 145 out of 187 on UNDP’s Human Development Index—but also because of the amount of imported goods. This imbalance of imports and exports leads to a major deficit for Nepal. Project ACCESS is about how to turn this situation around, all based on methods supporting and strengthening the backbone of this country: the villagers and the villages.