Lucky Chhetri

Lucky Chhetri challenges stereotypes of poverty, ignorance, and isolation for rural women by harnessing the growing demand for female mountaineers and adventure tourism professionals. In a traditionally marginalized population, she creates opportunities for education, social influence, and economic stability, giving them a voice in their society for the first time.

For women in rural areas, traditionally deprived of education and economic opportunity, Lucky opens a new pathway toward success. Her program, Empowering Women in Nepal (EWN), trains women as guides for Nepal’s booming adventure tourism industry. Trainees learn English, history, geography, and environmental preservation, along with skills for mountaineering and business management. They also learn to be physically and mentally tough, and to approach their life with confidence at work and in their home.
New knowledge and skills prepare participants in Lucky’s programs to confront and transform stereotypes and discrimination that have hindered Nepalese women for hundreds of years. As these women find their own economic success, they directly contradict those who doubt the ability of women to compete in strained job markets. Loan programs and alumni networks support them in establishing development projects and taking leadership roles in their communities. EWN programs help rural women move from lives of dependence and silence to lives of self-sufficiency and strength, creating a significant shift in the social structure of rural Nepal.

Many women in Nepal lack nutrition, education, employment, and health not only because resources are scarce, but also because traditional social structures deny them the power to make basic decisions about the course of their lives. It is a common practice in rural areas for women to be completely confined to the domains of household chores and raising children. Traditional views have kept rural women from formal education and the careers to which it leads. In the rural areas, only 14 percent of women are literate, compared to 44 percent of men.
Low levels of education form a vicious cycle with a lack of decision-making power, each reinforcing the other to depress the social position of rural women. Without degrees or significant training, these women struggle to compete in the strained job markets of Nepal. They often seek income in the informal sector, where wages are low or nonexistent. As a result, rural women lack the leisure time and self-sufficiency to represent themselves in their local communities, let alone the national government.
While women in urban areas face a slightly better situation, even they face daily discrimination and have little say in policy development. And they make up only a tiny fragment of the population; more than 85 percent of Nepalese women live outside cities, entangled by social and economic systems that too often leave them uneducated and underprivileged.

Lucky prepares women to challenge discrimination in the job market, building on their natural skills to gain economic independence. She saw great potential in the adventure tourism industry, where demand is high for female guides and tourism professionals. With its breathtaking geographic contrasts, Nepal has become a hot spot for mountaineering and trekking, and so far men have dominated the businesses that comprise the country’s adventure tourism industry. However, female guides provide a sense of comfort and security that many travelers—particularly single women—do not find with males.
Lucky saw in this situation a huge opportunity for job growth and developed a training program to help rural women leap into the adventure tourism industry. She established Empowering Women in Nepal (EWN) to lead trainings for an initial core of women, many of whom had never before left their villages. Lucky started a business connecting female trekkers to the newly trained guides from her program. The success of this venture inspired her to broaden her trainings to reach many more women. With over 100 alumni already, her program is gaining recognition and proving that Nepali women can successfully compete in tough job markets.
Trainees undergo an intensive four-week training program on technical and conversational English, also covering a broad range of topics including history, geography, and culture. Their training also emphasizes ecological awareness and conservation, teaching about water sanitation, crop rotation, waste management, and alternative sources of fuel. As trainees develop into adventure tourism professionals, they spread the ecologically sound practices they learn at EWN to their clients. In one example, they promote iodine purification methods rather than relying on mineral water and littering the Himalayas with plastic bottles. They even knit practical water bottle holders to raise money for the project and encourage their clients to protect the environment.
At the end of the training, women enter an apprenticeship program where they earn a full salary and acquire field experience working as guides. From their apprenticeship they gain immediate economic benefits and develop the skills they need to emerge as independent entrepreneurs. As they finish this stage, some women return to their villages to spread the program among friends and neighbors. Others continue their education at university or through EWN refresher courses, while most alumni find work in the adventure tourism industry.
As Lucky’s alumni achieve their own success, they encourage others to train and secure jobs for themselves. To support her trainees in becoming leaders for their community, Lucky has established a mutual loan program that supports them in founding local development projects. She connects trainees in an alumni network where members can share ideas and plan collaborative projects.
Lucky has worked to attract significant media attention to her programs, which have now been featured on CNN, Japanese television, and other national and international media outlets. Her trainees are gaining a reputation as the best in the market. Her media outreach leads to new business for her trainees and drives a surge of applications from disadvantaged women in remote districts.
With demand for her trainings rising, Lucky is building a strategy for expansion relying largely on mobile trainings. She launched a suite of mobile trainings in western Nepal in 2004, and she plans to spread the trainings across ten districts within four years. She has also partnered with the Nepal Tourism Board and Trekking Agents Association of Nepal, who have given high priority to her program. With their help she has reached beyond the country’s borders to the Indian Himalayas, and she intends to spread her program to Tibet. In addition, she has opened a culinary school, leveraging the ethnic culinary skills of her women to add a delicious element to the travels of adventure tourists.
Lucky’s ventures all serve one central purpose: to create opportunities for women at work and at home. Until now, women’s voices have been silent, while men have dominated the economic and social dynamics of the house. Lucky shows that by acquiring financial independence, women can elevate their social status, gain self-confidence, and take their rightful role as leaders of social and cultural change.

Lucky Chhetri, the eldest of three sisters, was born and raised in India by parents native to Nepal. An early visit to western Nepal, exposing her to the hardships faced by rural women, kindled a strong desire to build power among women. Training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Training Institute sparked her interest in an adventurous life. As a child she was considered physically weak, but she rose to the challenge of this program and became a successful mountaineer. Realizing her strength, she started a pharmacy, a courier service, and a vegetable shop for her village, employing poor women in the first successful service ventures in her village.
In 1993, Lucky came across a group of unhappy and frightened single women travelers who had been seriously mistreated by their male guides. She was busy running a restaurant and a lodge in Pokhara, but upon hearing these stories she quickly decided to improve the system for the good of both foreign and Nepali women. Less than one year later, she started her women’s trekking guide service, the first of its kind in Nepal. Success did not come easily; in a society that considers women weak, she had problems at the start convincing potential business partners that her guides could do the job. Now, a decade later, her trekking service and training center has become a model for similar efforts around the globe.