Team

Luna Shrestha Thakur, Co-Founder

Being a graduate of hotel management, she has worked for top-end hotels in Nepal, the US and New Zealand. Her passion to make a change particularly for youngsters and women has brought her back to Nepal after seven years to found ChangeFusion Nepal in 2008 which has been hailed as the beacon of social entrepreneurship in Nepal. CFN promotes social entrepreneurship and youth engagement and has been the organizer of the first social entrepreneurship competition in Nepal which in 2011 and 2012 helped some of the hidden heroes to receive the attention and outreach they deserve.

Luna has published A Journey to the Self; a bock that is used in various schools to encourage students to venture beyond traditional paths and thinking. She was also awarded the Woman of the Year award of Nepal in 2012.

Catrin Fröhlich, Co-Founder

Catrin has worked in the private sector and for development agencies for over 10 years, trying to figure out how business can increase its positive social and environmental impacts and how development initiatives can become more effective and sustainable. She sees social entrepreneurship as a way of bringing the efficiency, incentive systems and short feedback-loops of business to the development field. This, she believes, will help to make a faster and more lasting change than traditional approaches.

She spent five years in Nepal promoting Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship. She was equally humbled and motivated by the innovators she met and by their passion for what they do, often times in the face of great adversity. She now wants to help others to meet, learn from and be inspired by those changemakers.

Mani Raj Chaulagain – Guide and Facilitator

His interesting career has taken Mani from working at a bank, in the development field and being a college lecturer to professional tour guiding for leading travel agencies in Nepal. Like Luna, he returned to his home country after a few years abroad. Despite a number of other engagements like running his own NGO, pursuing a Master in Buddhism, guiding adventure and cultural tours and being a yoga instructor he was an 'easy catch' for Hidden Journeys. The satisfaction of introducing guests to the changemakers and guiding them through a more intense learning experience was too exciting for him to miss.

Like Catrin, he forgets time and space while out scouting changemakers for the tours and turns up hours late beaming with excitement about the host's achievements and his learnings. He says: '' Hidden journeys provide an opportunity to have a true insight into the real Nepal. That goes through firsthand knowledge, real issues and challenges, mutual cooperation and extended relationships''