Daayitwa Nepal Public Policy Fellowship 2020

As Nepal is navigating the federalism process, the strengthening of governance systems in the federal model has become critical so that the immense potential for economic growth can be harnessed through power devolution. The growing talent, passion, and energy of youths in Nepal and across the world is a tremendous resource-base for the development of the country yet their engagement in bolstering the public systems and domestic economy has been limited. Moreover, the persisting political instability in the country has eroded the youth’s faith in their own government, and youth’s weak participation in development processes and impatience for rapid results have also tarnished the government’s perception of them. The trust deficiency on both sides has created a barrier, hindering youth-government collaboration for sustainable economic growth.

In addressing the issue of youth employment and youth-government trust deficit, for the past seven years, the Daayitwa Nepal Public Service Fellowship Program (DNPSF) has been enabling youths to collaborate with the government for conducting economic policy research and promoting evidence-based policy decisions. The fellowship program competitively selects and places young professionals and students in public agencies and with parliamentarians for 3-6 months, builds their technical and adaptive capacities, and enables them to provide research support to their public partners. During the past seven fellowship cycles (2013-2019), the fellowship program has supported 99 policy entrepreneurs from 28 countries to collaborate with 28 ministries and public agencies, and 24 parliamentarians to conduct research projects.

This year, under DNPSF, we are launching Daayitwa Nepal Public Policy Fellowship (DNPPF), with a key motive of “My Government, My Responsibility.” The Government of Nepal and Daayitwa have been partnering to identify and apply innovative methods of conducting research to find evidence for promoting entrepreneurship and strengthening governance.

The DNPPF 2020 program will consolidate action learning from the past seven years and have the following objectives:

Promote domestic youth employment
Strengthen youth-government policy collaboration
Nurture evidence mindset in federal and subnational governments

This collaborative initiative has become an action-platform for Nepali students and young professionals, in Nepal and internationally. The fellows also partake in a Leadership Course provided by the Nepal Leadership Academy designed at Harvard Kennedy School of Government by Professors Marshall Ganz and Ronald Heifetz in collaboration with Dr. Pukar Malla, the Executive Chairperson at Daayitwa. The course is built on Nepal’s socio-cultural and political context that teaches the youth public speaking, collaborative work, and adaptive leadership. The fellows also receive Research Mentorship with the Governance Lab, which aims to nurture the technical and leadership capacity of public officials for enhanced implementation and impact.

This year, we have identified and divided key policy issues into five thematic research topics: