By any measure, Arun’s achievements are remarkable. He grew up in an impoverished family on the edge of Kathmandu. With no money to enrol him in a private school, his parents sent him to the local government school, which was in a dire condition.

Six years later he left the school with top marks in the national exams, won a scholarship to study at a United World College in Germany and then a second scholarship to Skidmore College in New York state.

So what happened?

Well, mostly Arun worked incredibly hard to give himself the best chance in life. But also, the Collaborative Schools Network began to manage his school shortly after he started there. We also worked hard to transform the school, we encouraged him to think big and pointed him towards some opportunities he would never even have known about.

And now Arun wants to study development economic and “come back to Nepal and make a real difference.”