The Tulasi Meher UNESCO Club (TMUC) is a Kathmandu-based NGO building capacity of rural Himalayan communities in areas of income generation, health, and literacy. TMUC has a 15-year track record providing integrated development programming in the most remote parts of Nepal. In January 2007, TMUC initiated the Youth-Managed Resource Center initiative (YMRC) with the support of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL) at Utah State University in order to train youth leaders, provide technical support to supervisors, and to deliver hardware/software tools to participating communities.
The goal of the YMRC is to amplify rural educational and entrepreneurial opportunities through improved access to technology and utilization of relevant information from digital libraries and online content. Due to the rugged Himalayan terrain of these communities, rural people suffer from delayed dissemination of information; the YMRC responds to this need by facilitating access to critical information, thereby increasing opportunities for untouchables and ethnic groups to generate income through community entrepreneurship. The YMRC provides training and facilitation of community action projects in remote villages, particularly emphasizing the role of youth as community mobilizers who empower others from their disadvantaged and minority groups.
