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 countries. The presentations and displays addressed how AI can advance commercial and political interests (China, for example, had a major presence). However, what Arun and I found remarkable is that there was almost no mention of how AI could help achieve the UN’s number one social development goal: eliminating poverty.
UMN’s vision is “fullness of life for all in a transformed Nepali society.” (my underlining) I believe that AI may be a tool that will help UMN achieve that vision. However, we are proceeding very cautiously and carefully since this is very much a pioneering effort.
I am happy to report that the PCC funded Phase 1 of UMN’s AI for Good Project (aka AI for Poverty Reduction in Rural Nepal Project) was successfully completed, on time and under budget, in June of this year. We answered two crucial questions in the affirmative: could we find a Nepali AI engineer to help us and could we build a workable model (AI Agent)?
With the help of our AI engineer, we designed, built, and tested a web and text-based AI Agent that can assist Nepalis determine if they are entitled to certain social security benefits and, if so, how they can apply. It was tested by UMN employees at the UMN head office in Kathmandu. Even though the AI Agent was carefully designed to minimize the risk of hallucinations, it did come up with something on one occasion, which highlights the need for human oversight of AI chatbots. We very much have that in mind as we proceed.
I am also happy to report that we have started with Phase 2 of the Project. This will again be funded by the PCC (Phases 1 and 2 were funded through a generous donation to the PCC). During the first part of Phase 2 we will seek to add, with the help of our Nepali AI engineer, a voice interface and a “Pitch a Project” layer to our AI Agent. We will test it here at the UMN Kathmandu office. If it shows sufficient promise, it will be tested in the field – by women’s groups in two remote villages in the far West of Nepal (if they agree). I will be the Project Manager.
I was recently brainstorming with ChatGPT about our Project. I asked the question set out above: can AI help alleviate poverty in the remote rural areas of Nepal? Here is its one sentence answer, with which I fully agree: “AI can help alleviate rural poverty by giving geographically isolated people unprecedented access to the world’s knowledge, capabilities, opportunities and resources—while giving the outside world an unprecedented ability to understand and respond to need identified by those communities themselves.”
Please pray that we will be able to achieve this goal.
On a personal note, we recently celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary with our family (siblings, spouses of siblings, children, spouses of children and grandchildren) near our home town of Cranbrook, British Columbia. What a blessing! We are so thankful to God for that opportunity!!
I discovered that you can save yourself a ton of money for clothes by having your picture taken in casual clothes and then having AI dress you up – see photo 😂.
