As a graduate student of business management, Nistha Kayastha from Bhaktapur, Nepal, took a part-time job as an accountant at a textile company. It was there that she first saw the beauty of handloom weaving, a traditional and labor-intensive craft used to produce Nepali fabrics such as Pashmina and Dhaka.
What stayed with her most, however, was not only the craft itself but the women behind it. Nistha admired their talent but was saddened by how much they had come to undervalue their own skills. “They thought weaving was just something they did because they lack formal education,” she recalls. That realization inspired her to start Handmade Wonders, a handloom enterprise, to promote local crafts and create income opportunities for local artisans.
With training, mentorship, and seed funding from the Entrepreneurship Support Program (ESP), Nistha formally registered her business enterprise in 2024.
ESP is implemented by the University Grants Commission (UGC)with support from the World Bank-financed Nurturing Excellence in Higher Education Program (NEHEP). Launched in 2021, NEHEP aims to make Nepal’s higher education more relevant to the labor market and to help graduates move from education to employment.
Through ESP, selected institutions affiliated with the UGC provided entrepreneurship training to more than 1,900 students and graduates, including Nistha, equipping them with practical skills beyond academics to turn local ideas into income-generating ventures.
Today, Handmade Wonders exports Nepali textile products to the United States and France and employs 20 local women artisans, seven on a full-time basis and the rest as part-time and home-based workers. For many, the job has been a first step into the formal economy.
“Many of my employees’ first bank account was their salary account,” says Nistha. “I am glad the home-based workers can do paid work while managing caregiving responsibilities at home.”
Addressing the education to employment gap
In Nepal, the education sector has made significant progress in building human capital. The literacy rate climbed from 49 percent in 2001 to 76.2 percent in 2021, reflecting broader gains in access to learning. Higher education has expanded as well, encompassing over 1,400 institutions and enrolling 633,000students nationwide in 2025.
Yet this growth has not translated into labor market readiness: with approximately 500,000 young people entering the workforce annually and the youth labor force projected to reach 22 million by 2030, higher education institutions are falling short in equipping graduates with the technical and soft skills needed for the labor market. This skills gap, compounded by low labor productivity continues to constrain job creation and economic opportunities.
In this context, NEHEP’s ESP initiative is supporting higher education institutions in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship skills, empowering students to transform ideas into market solutions and transition seamlessly into jobs and enterprises.
read more:https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2026/08/12/from-education-to-opportunity-investing-in-nepal-s-youth-for-more-and-better-jobs
