It has been an interesting few days in Kathmandu so far, trying to get work done with electricity supply sporadic at best. It seems the best time to try and do any work is between 4am and 8am most mornings as this is when you can get a fairly reliable charge for the laptop and the internet should stay connected! Unfortunately this is not the only difficulty people here are facing right now as we have just seen the end of an 18 day garbage collection strike!
Still, we have managed to make some good progress with new projects for 2009. The first of these involved Rebecca presenting at a forum on the future of the pashmina industry in Nepal. We have been working with Nepal Pashmina Industry Association (NPIA) for some time helping them with trade mark registrations and general branding advice. (Read more about this
at our website.) We wanted to take this further as pashmina is one of the industries with the best potential for Nepal. The forum brought together industry specialists including scientists from the Nepal Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) and collectively we have started working towards a strategy to improve the processing infrastructure for the industry. This will include a large education component for women in the key areas where pashmina goats are farmed. These areas are typically high up in the Himalayas and quite poor, with little education and basically a subsistence lifestyle. The research carried out so far suggests that with a small amount of targeted input we will be able to make some big inroads into providing education and training opportunities for the women and girls in these areas. Stay tuned for more as this project takes shapes during the year.
The electricity situation has made blog updates very difficult but we have been ‘on the go’ for the entire week and we will post the updates as and when we can!
Still, we have managed to make some good progress with new projects for 2009. The first of these involved Rebecca presenting at a forum on the future of the pashmina industry in Nepal. We have been working with Nepal Pashmina Industry Association (NPIA) for some time helping them with trade mark registrations and general branding advice. (Read more about this at our website.) We wanted to take this further as pashmina is one of the industries with the best potential for Nepal. The forum brought together industry specialists including scientists from the Nepal Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) and collectively we have started working towards a strategy to improve the processing infrastructure for the industry. This will include a large education component for women in the key areas where pashmina goats are farmed. These areas are typically high up in the Himalayas and quite poor, with little education and basically a subsistence lifestyle. The research carried out so far suggests that with a small amount of targeted input we will be able to make some big inroads into providing education and training opportunities for the women and girls in these areas. Stay tuned for more as this project takes shapes during the year.
The electricity situation has made blog updates very difficult but we have been ‘on the go’ for the entire week and we will post the updates as and when we can!
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