Gerry writing. UMN is seeking to answer the question: can AI help alleviate poverty in the remote rural areas of Nepal? Why is this needed? From July 7-10, 2026, a Nepali colleague, Arun Belbase and I attended the UN sponsored AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, Switzerland. It attracted over 12,000 participants from 177 […]

Lora writing. Our return to Nepal (about 7 weeks ago now), as I have told some of you, was marked for me by the surprise grief at my mother’s death. Grief is sneaky that way; I am reminded in Jan Richardson’s blessing for the dailiness of grief of something that: “will take your breath away… […]

Mitch’s reflection: As of early afternoon on Thursday, September 10th, fifteen days after the horrific Nepal flooding of August 26, 2026, the numbers are staggering. From just this tiny, narrow river corridor, comprising the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli rivers, where the damage only extended about 40 miles, there have been 1,367 bodies recovered, with an additional […]

Lora writing. Each fall that we have been here has brought national grief: widespread flooding in 2024, the political uprising in 2025, and now, yesterday, there was devastation in Nepal, perhaps unlike anything that has ever been seen. The video footage is awful (and I would recommend that you don’t watch much of it, if […]