For Israeli Ambassador to Nepal Hanan Goder, this is a hectic assignment. He visits villages, meets farmers and shares experiences. Along with visiting different parts of Nepal, he also encourages collaborative efforts with Nepalese and various organizations of Israel in different fields, education, judiciary, private sector, health and agriculture.

Along with visiting villages, he has something different to offer to Nepal based diplomats and Nepalese retired diplomats and people of various walks of life. Whether it be sending Nepalese youth to Israel to learn modern agriculture or bring Israeli volunteers and experts to villages and hospitals and promoting other activities, ambassador Hanan is busy all the time.

Just a week after organizing a program for young Nepalese farmers, he was busy visiting Kavre village to meet the participants of the summer program entitled 'Engineering for Developing Communities'.

Nepal has undergraduate engineering students coming from Israel, United States of America, Brazil, Australia, France, South Korea and Nepal. This kind of program has been organized for the first time in Nepal.

The whole efforts of ambassador Hanan are to encourage Nepalese experts and people of various walks of life to understand the possibilities and immense opportunities available in Nepal.

He hunted the talent of former Nepalese ambassador Dr. Singha Bahadur Basnyat whose Jureli, bird inspired flight of imagination, describes Nepal’s natural, religious and cultural diversity.

“With Hanan’s words, ‘Nepal’s gifted with rich natural beauty’ in the back of mind, I felt the bird wrote literally the rest of the text,” writes Singh Bahadur Basnyat. 

Conducted by Kathmandu University in collaboration with Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, a month long International Summer Course was organized in Nepal for the first time. Participated in by 36 undergraduate students from Israel, United States of America, Australia, France, Brazil, South Korea and Nepal, the summer program entitled 'Engineering for Developing Communities' helped to share Nepal’s experiences to the world.

At the end ambassador Hanan organized a big party at his residence and provide certificates to the participants.

”Nepal is a country with immense diversities and possibilities,” said ambassador Hanan at the program.  

The focus of this program was on the theory and field knowledge with the core idea on Bio-Gas, Improved Cooking Stoves, Solar PV, Improved Water Mills, Rain Water Harvesting and Hydraulic Pump.

According to a press release of Embassy of Israel, the opening ceremony was held on 22 July 2013 at the premises of Kathmandu University amidst the presence of UNESCO country representative, KU Vice Chancellor, delegates from Technion-Israel, Delegates from University of Colorado – Boulder, teachers and students from the University along with the participating international students. 

Prof. Mark Talesnick, founder and head of Engineers Without Borders (EWB)-Technion, Israel, said,"The program provided an opportunity for all the students to interact and have a real international engineering experience. Not just engineering students but also students from different faculties took part and imparted their different viewpoints'.”

Dr. Bhim Prasad Shrestha, Kathmandu University Department coordinator for the program in Nepal, said “It was a great opportunity for students and faculty at Kathmandu University to interact with faculty and students from abroad and work together to achieve a common goal. Such programs will be continued with several other partners around the globe to further enhance such programs in the future.”

During their stay, the students worked at the outreach centers of Kathmandu University in Dhulikhel.  Bernard Amadei, Professor of Engineering University of Colorado-Boulder, said the summer program helped to learn different modalities practices in Nepal.

EWB is an international organization with more than 300 chapters around the world. Founded in 2001 by Prof. Bernard Amadei, it is dedicated to fostering sustainable energy projects in developing and disadvantaged communities around the world.

Along with this, Mount Everest and Dead Sea Stones Exchange was one of the main joint projects of the Embassy of Israel in Nepal, and the Governments of the respective countries. Under this project, a monument that has embedded stones from the region of Mt. Everest was established at the premises of Dead Sea and the stones brought from Dead Sea, Israel, were installed as a monument near Mt. Everest Region.

Ambassador Hanan showed that Nepal and Israel have a lot of things to share. At a time when Nepal is in desperate need of support for development, recent activities of Israeli Embassy remind us Nepal has the potential as well as opportunities to meet its needs.