Launched in 2022, Nepal Youth Foundation’s long-term Caste Equality Project is our most ambitious and daring undertaking yet. Our goal is to empower members of Dalit castes (historically seen as “untouchable”) to access opportunities needed to thrive as members of their broader society, defend their human rights, build prosperity, participate in social development and positive change, and dismantle the systems of oppression standing between their communities and the safe, dignified lives that are their birthright.

Like our Empowering Freed Kamlaris program of 2000-2020, we expect this work to take a generation or more. Our full Caste Equality Project will combine lessons learned across our organization’s 30+ year history, providing on-the-ground interventions in Dalit communities who have endured the worst oppressions of all. We’re proud to develop these interventions in partnership with allies within the Dalit Rights community.

The challenges confronted by Nepal’s Dalit communities are complex and tightly woven with every aspect of life, from pre-natal care to early nutrition to educational opportunities to childhood friendships to housing stability and onward. Caste-based discrimination is illegal in Nepal, but in rural areas, access to legal recourse is rare. Many members of Dalit castes are not even aware that legal protections exist for them.

Educating Dalit Lawyers (or EDL), launched in July 2022, is an enriched law school scholarship program designed especially for graduating high schoolers from Nepal’s Dalit community, formerly known as the “untouchable” castes. The program encourages change at higher levels in Nepal by championing human rights lawyers from the Dalit community. Learn more here.

In 2023, we began Phase II of the Caste Equality Project in a handful of Dalit-majority villages in Tirhut Rural Municipality, Saptari District, Nepal. Our intention is to gradually scale into as many villages as is sustainable for NYF.

Saptari District is a region of Nepal where Dalit populations (those historically called “untouchable”) face particularly complex barriers between themselves and crucial resources like education, good nutrition, safe shelter, and more. NYF began the work of turning the tide for children living in Saptari District in July 2023. This phase focuses on bringing specialized versions of our existing, proven programming into the Musahar Dalit villages of Saptari District.

Since 2023, we’ve already launched peer counseling groups, school awareness campaigns, fully operational Community Learning Centers, free lunch programs, daycare, and much more.

School Enrollment Campaign

At the start of each academic year in 2024 and 2025, NYF worked with local families, teachers, and stakeholders to organize a School Enrollment Campaign—a massive push towards educational equity in Tirhut Rural Municipality. The campaign includes rallies and personalized home visits to promote the value of education, with staff members making door-to-door visits with parents to encourage them to enroll their children into school. In 2024, hundreds of school uniforms—handmade by industrial tailoring students who had been enrolled at Olgapuri Vocational School at the time—and bags were also distributed to children in the region. Thanks to NYF scholarships and free lunch programs, by the time the 2024 school year began, over 820 students surged into local schools. This is a 35% increase in attendance compared to the previous year.

Free Lunch Program

School lunches are particularly important in Saptari District, where most children face lack access to hot, nutritious meals. NYF’s daily free lunch service not only exponentially increases classroom attendance, but also ensures that school-aged children receive at least one nutritious meal a day. Menus are thoughtfully designed by our nutrition team and are prepared with traditional Nepali recipes, using ingredients like legumes, vegetables, protein, and fruit to keep children energized and engaged in their learning.

Improvements to School Infrastructure

In 2025, NYF began expanding and improving school infrastructure to meet the growing demand. We installed new furniture & ceiling fans to improve learning conditions and built three new classrooms (and one kitchen). Our team also constructed new toilets at six different schools. Each facility includes flush systems and running water, creating a more supportive environment for all students, especially girls.

Peer Counseling

Trained peer counselors play significant roles in the community. As they lead monthly support groups (which sometimes have more than 70+ attendees!) and share information about mental health, healing, family planning, and more, peer counselors support community members in so many ways—including the prevention of harmful practices like early marriage.  This is a community-centered approach that sits at the cornerstone of NYF’s strategy to ensure sustainable, far-reaching social change.

Street Drama Activism

Drawing inspiration from the impactful street drama programs of NYF’s anti-Kamlari movement from over 20 years ago, street drama activism will be an important component of the Caste Equality Project. The dramas aim to raise awareness about harmful social issues prevalent in the communities we are working with. NYF is collaborating with Aarohan Gurukul School of Theater to train local youth in performative art, who are then empowered to perform street plays. The plays are performed by local youth in the native Maithili language, helping members of the audience understand easily.

Back-to-School Bridging Courses

Back-to-School Bridging Courses are for teenagers who have dropped out of school but wish to reenroll. During the school day, local teachers provide “catch-up” lessons to help students reintegrate back into the classroom. Not only are students able to get used to the rhythm of attending school again, but they are also able to enter school with the oldest group of students possible. This strengthens their motivation and satisfaction in the school experience. So far, 33 girls who had dropped out of school are now back in the classroom, thanks to these bridging courses!

After School Tutoring

Trained, locally-hired teachers are supporting children (pre-K through 12th grade) after school at our Community Learning Centers with homework and personalized tutoring—helping students achieve success in school. This motivates students to continue attending school, and parents, who see their children succeeding, are also more motivated to continue encouraging students to attend school. Girls especially are empowered to achieve their academic potential, making them less vulnerable to child marriage and early childbearing.

Staff at the Community Learning Centers also provide healthy, freshly prepared afterschool snacks. This increases access to nutritious food before children return home, keeping their physical and cognitive development as close to ideal as possible. We’re proud that these after school programs provide a safe, stable afterschool environment for young students between the end of the school day and the end of their parents’ workday. So far in 2025, 120 students from preschool to Grade 12 received after-school tutoring at our CLCs.

Early Childhood Daycare

For children aged 3.5 years and below, our Community Learning Centers offer free education-focused, play-based childcare. In addition to providing healthy socialization and early childhood learning opportunities for toddlers, this program also benefits local mothers who are better able to access work opportunities during the day.

The program also provides healthy, nutrient-rich lunches and snacks—all of which are prepared on-site by our cooks, using menus formulated by the nutritionists on our team. Since launching, this has helped decreased malnutrition rates by almost 30% in the villages NYF operate in.

Adult Literacy Program

In 2025, 70 women have also completed NYF’s six-month Adult Literacy Program. Participants meet for two hours a day, six days a week, and covers legal, financial, and Nepali language literacy. This enables women to participate more in the workforce, engage more fully with local government, strengthen their knowledge of their legal rights, and ultimately join the fight against caste discrimination. When girls and women reclaim education, they uplift entire communities—sparking change that echoes across generations.

In October 2025, NYF was featured in Gorkhapatra, Nepal’s national government daily newspaper, highlighting young women who have felt empowered after taking NYF’s Adult Literacy Classes. 

• Provide vocational training for young adults in construction trades like plumbing, electrical, welding, and carpentry. These young adults will then return to their villages to begin their first trade jobs: improving the school buildings back home!
• Establish a local co-op/savings group among the women, beginning by providing livelihood training and business start-up support to 20 mothers.
• Launch a large-scale awareness and prevention campaign about topics related to women’s health: menstrual hygiene, early marriage, nutritional health, and the traditional dowry system, for example.
• Organize disaster preparedness programs and establish emergency response resources within the villages themselves, including forming an action group for disaster response, plus environmental protection and hygiene (for example, protecting water safety).

Casteism in Nepal

Like other entrenched systems of oppression throughout the world, Nepal’s caste system has a complex history.

For many centuries, changing political regimes worked to unify the Himalayan civilizations that would eventually become the Nepal we know today. A strict social hierarchy developed across this diverse population, rooted in the spiritual practices of Hinduism.

This “caste system” ranked families, ethnic groups, and communities based on their occupations, and strict laws solidified and enforced this oppressive social order. A person’s caste was—and still is—permanent.

Dalits are in the lowest of these castes and make up over 13% of Nepal’s population—around 4 million individuals. At least 42% of Nepal’s Dalits (over double the national average) live below the country’s poverty line of only $166 per year.

Caste-based discrimination was formally outlawed in Nepal in 1963 (with renewed commitment from parliament in 2006), but due to structural inequality, historical oppression, widespread tradition, and cultural bias, Dalits in Nepal face social, economic, cultural, religious, and political marginalization. Hate crimes and acts of violence often go unprosecuted, and many in these communities experience severe limitations in educational access, employment, housing opportunities, and health care.

Discrimination is worst in rural regions, but even in Nepal’s urban areas, where the culture has changed more rapidly towards a more merit-based model, stories still abound of shocking injustices experienced by those born into Dalit families.

The Dalit Rights Movement

Since at least the mid-1800s, social reformers in India and Nepal have become increasingly vocal against casteist injustice. Many in the United States and other Western countries will most quickly recognize the name Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)—a lawyer known for nonviolent civil rights activism and the Indian fight against British colonial rule, and for inspiring activists worldwide, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela. One of Gandhi’s major goals was the eradication of untouchability, which he called a great evil. (Gandhi’s efforts were not universally embraced in the Dalit rights community. Like any social movement confronting complex systems of oppression, the process of dismantling casteism is complicated, both within the movement and outside of it. Learn more here.)

Legal protections, justice, and progress towards equality for Dalits have been hard-won, with the journeys of these movements differing in each country and each community impacted by casteism. Most information available to Westerners about the caste system is specific to India, as most of the world’s Dalits live there. However, many of the issues facing Nepali Dalits are distinct. At NYF, we’re grateful to have our all-Nepali team to guide our efforts!

The COVID-19 pandemic has made social injustices more starkly visible across the world, and social media has given communities a stronger ability to organize themselves—especially younger generations. Young Dalits are pushing back, inspired in part by the American #BlackLivesMatter protests in the summer of 2020 and beyond.

This “Dalit Lives Matter” movement has seen advocacy initiatives gain strength in both India and Nepal, with court cases involving violence against Dalits receiving unprecedented national attention.

Many of the most successful court cases are presented by lawyers who are themselves members of the Dalit castes—lawyers who personally understand the experiences of their clients, and are prepared to argue their cases with devastating precision and clarity. But in Nepal today, only about 200 Dalit lawyers exist. That’s only 0.001% of the Dalit community. Of the judges serving in Nepal, only .01% are Dalit. Dalits are drastically underrepresented at all levels of Nepal’s government.

Now, with young Dalits across Nepal uniting to push back against systemic oppression, the stage is set for unprecedented social transformation—and NYF is perfectly positioned to support the work of these impassioned young activists.

Partnerships

As always, NYF is developing this project in partnership with local grassroots NGOs, Dalit rights advocates, and community members—a proven approach for ensuring far-reaching, sustainable social change.

Here are a few of the partners helping to ensure we work as effectively as possible:

• Dignity Initiative is a Dalit-led NGO based in Kathmandu, advocating for the rights of the Dalit community through research, activism, policy advocacy, youth empowerment as well as critical engagement in public debate. They are partnering with NYF on Phase 1: Educating Dalit Lawyers. Learn more by visiting our Phase 1 program page!

New partners will be added to this page as the Caste Equality Project grows.

Learn More

The Dalit Rights Movement and the push against casteism have been in the news frequently in Nepal recently. If you’d like to learn more, here is some coverage written by Nepalis and published in English.

Himalayan Times, June 5th, 2022, “Caste Discrimination Still Entrenched,” by Ram Kumar Kamat – an overview of casteist discrimination and the ways law enforcement is failing to protect Dalits.

Nepali Times, May 12, 2024, “Who cares? Amnesty International issues scathing report on caste-based discrimination in Nepal”