GAP YEAR NEPAL is a small enterprise located in Kathmandu, Nepal. It provides enriching and memorable travel experience to tourists, volunteers and every guest who comes to visit. The company embraces the concepts of sustainability and responsible operating practices and is very proud of Nepal’s natural and cultural beauty. Since 2015 managerwithoutboarders supports and consults the local business. Due to the Corona crisis GAP YEAR NEPAL was one of the enterprises acquiring a donation from Germany for budget support.
How has life changed since the beginning of the crisis?
The situation is not any better as the number of cases are on rise. The country is in lock-down since 24th March and it is definitely taking toll on the patience of the people. Due to the lock-down people are not able to open their business as like us. At the moment our small team is exploring opportunities, such as updating websites, designing new programs, getting busy in social media. We all work remotly from our home office. It is often challenging when the internet slows down and the team doesn’t understand what is actually communicated and some new but interesting products are developed instead. For exapample „Accessible Nepal“, a platform to make tours accessible to people all around the world (https://accessiblenepal.com).
How does the Corona budget from managerwithoutboarders help?
We received the Corona budget by end of May and it helped to pay our staff salary. We really appreciate managerwithoutboarders fund during this crisis and such help in the future will not only help us keep afloat in the market.
What are your plans for the future?
We are planning for the prolonged home-office as this is also helpful to keep up the social distancing and decrease the mobility. Once the lock-down eases, we will keep alternate office working days well coordinated with home-office. Currently, we are designing new programs such as wellness tours or monk-inspired tours. We hope we will be able to target the market of people looking for something new to cleanse of their body mind and soul after the pandemic. Furthermore, we also aim to focus on local products for local people such as sustainable restaurants and resorts, local tourism, livelihood, farming and agriculture. We hope to sustain ourselves and also to help to the local community by purchasing the local products, ultimately helping the community financially during this difficult time.