Alumni Highlight- Prakash Bista

Principal Bhawana Basyal, Prakash Bista, and Kimberly Mullenix, Class of 2016.

Exemplifying Soka’s mission to live a contributive life, 2017 graduate Prakash Bista dedicated his life to providing rural grade-school education in his native Nepal. With resources, support, and guidance from Soka professors, staff, and donors, Prakash was able to create greater momentum towards developing educational opportunities for the children of his village and surrounding area.

Prior to entering Soka, Prakash founded and directed Modern Model Residential School in Nepal’s remote Kalikot District. He led residents of his home village in building a school about a decade ago, but he was just getting started on his goal to help educate those Nepalese children without means.

Through participation in a Soka cocurricular program that helps Soka students connect their education to the business world, in 2014 Prakash entered and won a $10,000 prize in the Orange County Social Entrepreneurship Competition, beating 10 other social entrepreneurs from around the world. He used the money to build more school buildings. This also generated a front page Sunday feature story in the Orange County Register, bringing forth more opportunities. From there, Prakash went on to establish Impact Schools, a US based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Following these efforts to obtain an undergraduate education, build schools, and launch Impact Schools, Prakash graduated last year from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)’s Master’s Program in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He then returned to Nepal to work with the schools he and his team have built in rural western Nepal. The villages where two of the schools are located do not yet have access to basic infrastructure like roads, electricity, running water, and sewage systems.

“I have been mainly involved in expanding infrastructure and resources at our existing two schools,” he reported. “We have around 250 students now at both of our schools. We also started bringing in children from extremely poor family backgrounds like orphans and students with single parents with limited resources at our hostel facilities. There we provide free room, board, and education. We currently have 30 such children staying at our hostel facility.”

He added, “I continue to manage our U.S. charity, Impact Schools, that helps support these programs and activities at our schools in Nepal.”

Impact Schools recently received funding to build four school buildings, two hostel buildings and necessary auxiliary facilities including bathrooms and a solar power plant.

“We are looking to enroll around 500 children next year and provide hostel facilities for 50 to 60 children in extreme need of support at our hostel facilities. Next year, we also plan to start preparing to build and start a few more schools in addition to our two existing schools,” noted Prakash.

In October, Soka University was thrilled to have Prakash back on campus to talk about these efforts at an alumni panel at the 6 th Annual Dialogue on the Culture of Peace and Non- Violence.

Stay tuned for further progress as Prakash continues to build on his goal of sharing education with his home nation.