Bloom Nepal: Empowering students with interest-based education

Ram K. Rijal (MIT Mathematics ‘12)

Bloom Nepal is a network of schools that is working to educate K-12 students to become leaders in various frontiers. The schools focus on helping students identify their true passions and talents, and providing opportunities for them to excel in the field of their choice. Founded by MIT alum Ram K. Rijal (Mathematics ‘12), Bloom Nepal was inspired by his time at MIT and his personal experiences growing up in a rural village in Nepal.

Finding his passion at MIT

Ram arrived at MIT in 2008, where he initially chose AeroAstro as his major, but ultimately landed on Mathematics and Economics: Economics would be useful back home, while Mathematics was his “passion area”. While pursuing his degree, he explored an interest in computer science as well.

Ram credits his ability to look into a variety of interests for his inspiration for starting Bloom Nepal, which would offer Nepalese students the opportunity earlier on in their educations to explore their passion areas. “It made me think that if I had structured training when I was growing up, maybe I would have been able to learn so much more. I would’ve been able to select the courses that I was interested in to make the most of my MIT education.”

While at MIT, Ram became involved with the MIT Sailing Club and with the management of his living group, MIT Student House in Boston, where he remained until he graduated. There, he was not only able to build life-long friendships, but also found additional inspiration for starting his own school.

“A few friends of mine were setting up software and were designing algorithms,” he said. “They had this environment where they could engage in computer science, coding, and participate in competitions that really polished their skills and made them experts in their fields. I thought that if people are provided with training in the field of their interest early on, maybe this has the opportunity to make someone feel happy and accomplished. This was not the type of education system I had seen growing up. With the assumption that people have an interest area they would like to engage in, this was something that I wanted to try to implement.”

Ram also joined the MIT Global Poverty Initiative, a student-led initiative that brought him to Panama to help assess a waterfront project and come up with solutions on how it could be implemented. “It was a wonderful experience, because I got to see how poverty and other social and developmental issues are seen in countries other than Nepal.”

The summer of his sophomore year, he traveled to Uttarakhand, India, through the MIT-India program and interned with a microfinance startup. There, he found both differences and similarities between the rural villages of Uttarakhand and the village where he grew up in Nepal. “I come from the western part of [Nepal], where the nearest bus stop was about a two days walk from my home,” he explained. “Areas [in Uttarakhand] that were supposedly more rural than my own village had good access to roads and good facilities. It gave me the perspective that even in these extreme locations, roads and hospitals can be built.”

Working with customers in rural communities at the startup offered its own learning experience as well. “Empowering people at the grassroots level to make financial decisions themselves was a very powerful idea,” he said. “Those three months gave me appreciation of how things are done elsewhere and what tools can be used to combat poverty, and that gave me the inspiration to want to come back to my country and do something similar.”

Testing the “interest-based education” hypothesis

Equipped with his degree from MIT, a global perspective, and a deeper appreciation for interest-based education, Ram soon returned to Nepal to realize his vision for a school that would offer Nepalese students the chance to explore their interests just as he was able to. Bloom Nepal was officially founded in 2013 as a K-12 residential school, where students would do regular coursework from 9 to 4 and afterwards, be given the opportunity to engage in various fields such as mathematics, computer science, or football. “The idea is to provide them with options to shop around and take courses, and find out their passion for themselves,” Ram explained.

Photos from the Bloom Nepal campus in Lubhu, Lalitpur.

The criteria for choosing students involves looking for those who lack access to resources, but have good academics and a displayed interest in a specific field. Bloom Nepal Foundation also provides scholarships to students in need.

While the journey of getting Bloom Nepal off the ground has faced its challenges - from getting a license from the government, finding a space, teachers, and students, to the 2015 earthquake that destroyed Bloom Nepal’s first campus in Kathmandu - Ram continues to see the school’s potential to empower its students through education. Since the school’s founding, 40 students have graduated from grade 10, and that first batch of graduates are now applying to schools in the U.S., with one student already receiving a full scholarship to Richmond University. Other students have gone on to UWC (United World Colleges) and International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in Nepal.

Expanding Bloom Nepal’s network

Moving forward, Ram will continue to work towards expanding the school’s network, with the ultimate goal of opening 80 schools throughout the country, with 1,000 students enrolled in each. Since rebuilding the school in Lubhu, Lalitpur, a second Bloom Nepal has opened further east in Itahari. He is also working on digitizing the school’s courses - a project that has always been important to him and has been prioritized due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We have to move on par with other developed countries in the world,” he said. “These courses would be made accessible for any student in the country to enroll and participate for free.”

Ram reflects on his own life experiences and the benefits of having access to education, as he looks forward to the future of Bloom Nepal. “After receiving an education from my village, then being able to go to MIT - that’s not an ordinary story,” he said. “Education has that power to transform; it gives you the confidence to go out and try things.”