GalliGalli, a women-led organization, was founded by Surabhee Pudasaini, who is the current head of the organization. It is a not-for-profit company which gathers, packages, and disseminates information on how to access government services. GalliGalli works both on-the-ground and online. Recently, the two co-coordinators of the organization came up with the idea of a web application, named NaliBeli, to help the general people get knowledge about governmental offices. It is an online portal which can be edited and saved by anyone. In Nepal, the system of Nepali governmental offices is not well managed. People have trouble finding the right places to go and the right documents to bring. NaliBeli helps make people’s life easier by providing information on both the formal and informal processes that occur inside the government offices. It is available with Nepali and English both the languages.

DWIT news recently had the opportunity to talk with the co-coordinators, Sabina Dhakal and Ambika Osti, about their journey and how the idea was founded.

Sabina Dhakal: Could you tell us a little bit about DWIT news? What sort of news do you cover and is it a daily newspaper?

“DWIT news is a weekly updated news website, which is entirely organized by the interested students of DWIT. Recently, it has been registered officially as a separate private company under the names of our two co-editors in chiefs, Ashmita Kunwar and Nikita Gautam. We currently have about 15-16 members working to publish new articles each week. The articles we publish include news from around town, inside the college, sports, technology and many more. You can find out more by visiting our website -dwitnews.com.”

Q) Is GalliGalli a solely tech-related organization?

“No. Actually, we’re social-science graduates. We opened this organization to help the general people, empower women in the society and conduct various discussion sessions like ‘Sukul Bahas’ which is a monthly discussion about various issues people are facing in the society. We also invite various district officers and involve them in our discussions.”

Q) Could you tell us a little bit about NaliBeli? How did that idea come to be?

“NaliBeli is an open portal website where information about the formal processes of governmental offices is stored. Many of the citizens are not aware of the processes and they have no idea what documents are required, or how much money it takes for any single process to be conducted. So anyone with that knowledge can edit this web application and share the information that they know, it is kind of open source platform.

Q) Who designed the website?

“At first, we decided to design it on our own. We had  technical people on our team who had an idea about creating web pages. We came up with a simple design similar to Wikipedia but the size of the application was a little too much for us and we thought it would be better if we sought professional help. One of our members knew the people in Kaji Studio, Lalitpur and he hooked us up.”

Q) Where do you get your funding from, to conduct the various activities of the organization?

“Majority of our funding comes from US National Innovate for Democracy Accountability Lab and various other national as well as international organizations. It was difficult in the beginning to get sponsors but as we promoted our ideas and visions, different organizations took the interest in our work.”

Q) Where did you collect the data to put on your website?

“We got it from a whole host of different places. We searched for information online, we searched in Badapatra and we communicated face-to-face with district officers and asked them for as much information as possible. We conduct a lot of meetings monthly to gain newer information and update our website as much as possible.”

This application Nalibeli is the best example of women's power. This is now solely handled by a group of ladies with the educational background of social science. The organization is missing technical people for now. Therefore, students or any person with technical knowledge can approach to be a part of Nalibeli. When we asked "Can we join Nalibeli as we are from  technical background?", they  said, "we will welcome you with an open heart."

To know more about the Nalibeli, you can visit, nalibeli.org