Manjil Rana's Maya

TANAHUN, Dec 25: Manjil Rana, 23, was an undergraduate student of Human Ecology at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, USA until November 2010.

Educated in St Xavier’s School in Kathmandu and then in Mahindra United World College in Maharastra, India, Rana left his life and studies in the States to start Maya Universe Academy (MUA), a free school in his village in Udhin Dhunga of Tahanu District.

He started the school with a tent pitched on approximately 15 ropanis of his ancestral land.

The three bamboo walled classrooms, a stone walled library and vast playground makes up MUA now, has now become an exemplary school of sorts in the entire country.

Initiated from this academic session with one classroom, the students at MUA study for free and are also provided with all educational goods too.

The school stands apart from the rest of the school in Nepal not just in terms of its management and teaching methods but also in terms of the uniform the students wear. The boys wear grey daura surwal and Dhaka topi while the girls wear cholo and skirt to school every day.



“English is the means of communication in the school,” informed Rana, who returned to his village and started the school when his foreign friends who had come to visit his village requested to contribute in the educational sector.

“Since we have to speak in English at school, it has helped my command over the language,” shared Krishna Rana, a student at MUA, “the books in the library are in English too so it helps us a lot.”

Another unique aspect of this school is, in place of a fee, the parents of the students contribute their time for two days a month in maintaining and taking care of the cows, pigs and chicken farm along with the vegetable garden in the school.

“Instead of charging the parents for the education we ask them to contribute their time to the school which could be anything from taking care of the farm, vegetable garden or building stone walls for the school,” said Subash Rana, the administrator of the MUA.

“There are approximately 2 or 3 parents helping out at the school daily. And we have devised a time table for the parents after consulting with them to come and work as per their timings and incase they can’t come on the allotted day, they have to work an extra day in the next month as fine,” informed Subash.

“Working in the school for two days a month is not a huge price to pay to educate my children in an English medium school for free,” said Prem Bahadur Nepal, a parent who thinks the two days are an investment towards the better future of his children.

The money generated from the farms and vegetable garden is put back into the system to develop the school, said Subash. Come February one of Rana’s friends Urs Riggenba from Switzerland is installing a solar set in the village to generate income for the school.

Though MUA was started with a though of limiting 12 students per class, it was compelled to open up its classroom to students from the other government school who showed interest in studying there. Currently, MUA has 45 students in grade one, the only grade, who study under the three straw-thatched-roofed bamboo huts.



“We have plans to add grades every year but each student who wishes to study in our school has to start from grade one,” said Rana.

However, despite wanting to run a free school, MUA wasn’t allowed to be registered because it was a free school, therefore it had to charge the students Rs 1 per month and to finally get it registered at the District Education Office, Tanahu.

The school doesn’t have set subjects like in other schools. It has classes on arts, yoga, social studies, general knowledge and music. “Along with classroom teaching we also invite guest speakers to give practical knowledge to the students,” said Rana.

He further informed that some of the students are also given computer typing classes.

“I was unemployed and wanted to utilize my time free time in the afternoon, so I decided to teach at the school since it was a good initiative,” shared Rukmani Khanal, a graduate from Tanahu and a teacher at MUA.

Like Khanal, Tilu Dura and Nikki Acchami have also been teaching Nepali, Mathematics and English at the school for the past eight months for free. “Manjil has given his word to pay us as per the schools capabilities after a year,” said Khanal. The school also has four foreign teachers.

Volunteers from Korea, America, Holland, Australia, Slovenia and Lithuania have helped in teaching the kids. “I feel I have learnt much more than I taught the kids in a month,” said Urta Kairyte, a volunteer from Lithuania at the school.

Apart from the compulsory subjects the volunteers have to teach any other subject for a minimum of a month to six months after paying a fee of $2-300 to the school. “We use the fee collected from the volunteers and the support from the donors to develop the school,” said Rana.

Awarded special recognition for his contribution towards the educational sector at such a young age, Color Nepal, an NGO that works in the education on Dec 14 and also appointed the youth advisor by the American Embassy in Nepal, Rana who studied on scholarships saved up the money given to him by the family while studying in India and America and matched it with the donations to materialize the schools vision.

“The only other school of this kind exists in Brazil,” claimed Rana.

For further information and interest in volunteering or supporting MUA please visit www.mayauniverseacademy.org

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