Nepal
IT Academy · Taplejung, Nepal
A global career.
A global career.
A Himalayan address.
Taplejung sits in Nepal's far northeast, days from Kathmandu and a world away from its job market. For decades, a good education here ended with a bus ticket out. The Human Practice Foundation, Bhanu Jana Secondary School and Learnio built the alternative: an academy where 195 students have trained for the global digital market, and their earnings stay in the mountains.
Trained
195 students
Earned online
$105K+
An initiative of
With Bhanu Jana Secondary School · Funded by HPF's Founding Partners
With Bhanu Jana Secondary School · Funded by HPF's Founding Partners
195
Students trained across 12 cohorts since the 2022 pilot
60%
Of students are women, building careers that flex around family life
$105K+
Earned online by students and graduates, tracked cohort by cohort
2.5×
A graduate's earning potential against a typical office salary in the district
Taplejung is one of Nepal's most remote districts, high in the Himalayas beneath Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain on Earth. Farming is the main occupation. An office job, where one exists, pays around $200 a month. So the district's brightest do what bright young people across rural Nepal do: they leave, for Kathmandu or for work abroad, and most never come back.
The Human Practice Foundation had been working in Taplejung since 2017, rebuilding schools alongside the government and local authorities until its supported schools were graduating around 1,000 students a year. That success sharpened an uncomfortable question. HPF Founding Father Waldemar Schmidt kept asking what happened to the children after they left the school gates, and whether good schooling alone had actually given them a future in the district.
The answer was an academy. HPF and its Founding Partners funded it, Bhanu Jana Secondary School in Phungling became its host and operator, the local municipalities joined its steering committee, and Learnio was appointed training partner, bringing the model proven with the World Bank in Kosovo and Albania: hard digital skills, soft skills and a freelancing curriculum, delivered through Learnio's platform with mentors beside every cohort.
When Schmidt asked himself whether the schools alone had given the children a better future, his answer was blunt: “No, I don't think we have. We need to do more.” Waldemar Schmidt · Founding Father · Nepali Times, July 2024
Voices from Taplejung
Behind every number,
Behind every number,
a career that stayed home.
The ledger counts cohorts and dollars. The graduates count it differently: the first client, the first invoice, and the discovery that a career no longer requires leaving the district.
From local accountant to junior designer for a Danish travel company.
Danber Maden joined the first design course at Bhanu Jana with a sketchbook habit and an accountant's day job. After a year interning with Bookmundi he was promoted to Junior Graphic Designer, works with clients in Kathmandu and at home, and now mentors new IT Academy students.
Danber Maden
IT Academy graduate · Mentor
The Academy is ending the district's brain drain, one cohort at a time.
Head teacher Kishor Kumar Rai watches graduates earn more online from Taplejung than they could in local offices, with clients as far away as Singapore, Denmark and South Korea. The result, he says, is that they are happy to stay.
Kishor Kumar Rai
Head teacher · Bhanu Jana Secondary School
Sixty percent of the students are women, and that is by design.
Basanta Palungwa runs the Academy day to day, from admissions and mentoring to the manifesto's community programmes. Supporting women who want to keep freelancing while raising a family is one of the Academy's ten founding promises to Taplejung.
Basanta Palungwa
Head of Academy · IT Academy Taplejung
The bigger picture
We didn't move the students.
We didn't move the students.
We moved the market.
195 students · Phungling, Taplejung · Campus opened November 22, 2023
Project · IT Academy Taplejung (HPF)
How it works
Train for the global market.
Then earn from it, without moving.
The model is the one Learnio has run since Kosovo: a hard technical track in graphic design, digital marketing or web development, paired with business English, freelancing skills and daily mentoring. Students build profiles on Upwork, Fiverr and PeoplePerHour and start bidding on real contracts during the course itself, and graduate with a certification that prospective clients can verify.
Since 2017
Foundations
The Human Practice Foundation begins working in Taplejung as a registered INGO, rebuilding schools with the government and local authorities and lifting the district's whole education pipeline.
1,000
Students graduating yearly from district schools
2022–23
Pilot classes
Learnio delivers the first graphic design and digital marketing cohorts through its platform, hosted by Bhanu Jana Secondary School. The very first class proves the global market is reachable from Taplejung.
$67.4K
Earned by the first pilot cohort
Nov 2023
The campus opens
A purpose built academy opens on the school grounds in Phungling: bright classrooms, a co-working area, Pernille's Coffee Bar, and fibre optic internet donated by WorldLink.
Nov 22
Grand opening · 2023
2024–25
Scale up
Cohorts multiply across three tracks, classes carry the names of the Founding Partners who sponsor them, and virtual internships open doors with firms in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia.
12
Cohorts trained to date
Toward 2028
The next levels
Levels 2 and 3 add advanced design, web development and cyber security, with graduates funding advanced study from their own freelance earnings as the Academy builds toward its target.
800
Digital workers targeted by 2028
Outcomes
Real contracts,
Real contracts,
earned from the district.
The Academy is young, and Learnio tracks it the unglamorous way: a running ledger of every cohort, every active earner and every dollar brought into Taplejung from the global market.
Headline metric
$105K
Earned online by IT Academy students and graduates, all of it flowing into one Himalayan district.
Local office wage
≈ $200/mo
Level 1 graduate potential
$500+/mo
In Nepali rupees
NPR 13.6M
195
Students trained
Across 12 cohorts in graphic design, digital marketing and web development since 2022.
60%
Women students
A share the Academy protects by design, so digital careers can flex around family life.
42
Active earners
Averaging roughly $2,500 each in tracked online income, with clients in Singapore, Denmark and South Korea.
What the ledger shows.
Earnings are tracked class by class, and the pattern rhymes with what the World Bank's Kosovo evaluation found: outcomes follow engagement. A minority of highly active graduates generates most of the income, and every cohort adds new earners as internships convert into paid contracts.
$67.4K
Earned by the first pilot class of 24 students, the cohort that proved the model.
2.5×
A Level 1 graduate's earning potential against a typical local office salary.
15%
The share of tuition students pay themselves. Sponsors and Founding Partners cover the rest.
1,000
Students graduating from the district's schools each year, the pipeline the Academy now serves.
Verified & documented
Read the public record.
The IT Academy is documented publicly by the Human Practice Foundation, by the Academy itself, and by Nepal's independent press. The links below take you to the primary sources: the Academy's own site and talent marketplace, HPF's Nepal programme page, the opening announcement, independent reporting from Taplejung, and the host institution, Bhanu Jana Secondary School.
Official site
IT Academy Taplejung: courses, talent marketplace and the ten point manifesto
Visit it-academy.io →
Human Practice Foundation
HPF in Nepal: schools, livelihoods and the IT Academy
Read on humanpractice.org →
Independent press · Jul 2024
Going global to retain local talent
Read on nepalitimes.com →
Announcement · Nov 23, 2023
HPF's IT Academy opens in Taplejung to support Nepal's next IT entrepreneurs
Read the announcement →
Academy news · Campus life
Inside the campus: mentors, internships and the road to 800 digital workers
Read on it-academy.io →
Note: The earnings figures on this page come from Learnio's internal cohort ledger and are
updated as new classes graduate, so they may run ahead of numbers quoted in earlier press coverage. The IT
Academy is a Human Practice Foundation initiative, hosted and operated by Bhanu Jana Secondary School in
Phungling, with Learnio as training partner.