Our clients start from the age of 14. As our work is to help them reach decision making maturity we do not consider them as children rather we refer to them as youth or young adults. The following code of conduct is underlying our works and is the key for our strategy and lived by our staff and partners alike.
How we work? (Code of Conduct)
We are a social business
As a social business we exist primarily to serve our mission: to develop and provide professional education and career counseling tools in the context of Nepal. We do not believe in fundraising as the long-term solution to ensure financial liquidity. Rather we do want to be cost covering through providing our services for a fee to clients so that we can pay a fair salary to all staff and have the financial resources to invest in better IT-tools or reach out to remote areas. We believe any (social) business has to be profitable to build up resources to invest in the organization and
We are registered as a company not distributing profits under Nepal’s company registration act paragraph 19. This means while we do pay salaries to all working staffs (including the founders) none of the founders is expecting any kind of dividend or profit from the organization.
Pricing Strategies
We do deliberately discriminate in pricing in a way that individuals and social oriented organization do only have to pay the direct cost of delivering the service plus, as we understand that they would not be able to afford the service otherwise. For clients with a strong financial background though we do add margins to cover the overhead costs we have to provide free information material and keep our tools up to date at any time.
Information should be free
No young person can dream of a career which s(he) has not even heard of and the same goes for even the most engaged teachers to guide their students if they themselves are unknown about the avail- able options. One of our aims is therefore to make all this information available. An online platform – and later print material – should serve the youth as well as counselors as a source of information.
We hold Transparency high
In all our activities we try to be as transparent as possible towards our partners, clients, supporters and all other stakeholders.
We understand that corruption is a big issue in the context of Nepal and that transparency is the best way to fight it.
We work Youth centered
We believe that the young persons of Nepal are in a transition phase of their life. Therefore we strive to empower them and accompany them on their way. We take their feedback and wishes serious and understand that their interest
We treat personal information confidentiality
Everyone seeking our help is entering a trust relationship with us. We know that especially through our assessment tools and the counseling sessions we have access to very personal data of the young people. We will not share any of this data with any third person, if this is not explicitly requested by the client. Furthermore every team member working with confidential data is doing this consciously and with the due respect to every individual’s right to privacy.
We work independent and unbiased
Our counseling work is independent from any private or governmental educational institution or any other training or profit oriented service provider. While we do seek a network to educational institutions for the sake of updating the available data to the latest level, we do not seek any contract on promoting services of certain institutions on our website or during our programs. In particular we do not seek or accept any kind of paid promotion of colleges or training institutions for highlighting their offers above the offer of the others. Neither do we take any provision or share of any fees of the educational institutions.
By doing so we can guarantee that our career counseling is youth centered and guides the young person in an unbiased way. Recommendations for educations, courses or institutions we give are based on the client’s profile and the independent research we have done on organizations and possibilities as well as on the feedback about the quality from other clients.
Environmentally friendly
As a social business we are environmental conscious and try to reduce our environmental footprint to a minimum. In particular we do try to avoid traveling through plan whenever possible, reduce the amount of print-outs and waste to a minimum. Whenever in the field, we furthermore understand that we are role models for the young persons and show exemplary behavior as we don’t litter and don’t waste.
We believe in Nepal’s future
We believe that Nepal is a country with a lot of potential and that every young person has plenty of professional opportunities here. Our vision is that if everyone is guided to a profession which fits to his/her personality and strength, our country will flourish and be a better place to live.
We believe that a flourishing society in turn needs a broad variety of professionals through various sectors: from vocational jobs such as carpenters and electricians to service jobs such as hair dresser and tour guides or professionals in agriculture to academically trained professions such as the medical doctor or the geologist. We believe that our current youth has all capabilities to be a competent contributor to a better Nepal through their very own career path.
We promote innovation
We promote innovative ways of doing things. We include technologies wherever they are supportive for our mission and introduce innovative methods of teaching and counseling. We adopt new technologies such as social media to reach out to youth through the media they are most used to.
We also believe that innovative work time models such as part time or tele-working can increase not only the happiness but also the productivity and creativity of every team member so that we live this value also in designing our workplace.
We encourage people
We encourage people around us: Be it youth, who seek our advice or interns, who gather their first work experience with us. We want to encourage everyone to experiment with their skills and abilities and to trust that they are capable of achieving something.
We also encourage people around us to break down stereotypes and speak up against discrimination of youths, woman or casts.
We encourage our staff to permanently improve their skills, join trainings and workshops to increase their professional as well as private capacities.
We encourage clients and partners to give us open feedback and help us improving our service to them and the society of Nepal.