Meet Our Team
If you are interested in working with ECC and coming to Nepal, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Executive Director,
Co-founder
Min Shahi
Min was born in Dailekh in a remote village in Nepal. He has worked in the education field for over 30 years.
He started out taking a job as a teacher in the rural area, but then went on to continue his education getting his Master of Philosophy in education. He then joined the government but he felt his role was limited as far as being able to make real changes in education so he resigned and began social work.
He spent the next 16 years working for a few large education non-profits in Nepal, including Mission to Nepal and Rato Bangala Foundation. These opportunities accelerated his motivation for social work and quality education for rural Nepal.
When Min met Janie in 2014 he was ready to make a change and commit to a smaller more specialized project. Together they started ECC in Min’s birthplace, Dailekh. This project has been the perfect chance for Min to use everything he’s learned through years in the education sector and to give back to his own community.
He does everything in ECC from management, budgeting, and coordinating with the government, to rolling out carpet in classrooms and teaching students their ABCs.
Managing Director,
Co-founder
Janie Kaiser
Janie is a young American that has always loved working with kids and understanding development. She has a degree in child development from Vanderbilt University as well as in extensive experience working with kids from teaching to research projects.
She first came to Nepal in 2014 to conduct a research project on rural education development. After seeing the need for a new style of teaching and learning in the area, she was motivated to do something. So, her and Min worked together to start ECC and launched in 2017.
Janie designed ATLP, ECCs signature training program that focuses on active and interactive teaching. She has fallen in love with Nepal, especially the rural areas. Janies focus in the actual teaching and learning process.
She designs and implements all teacher training, works alongside the teachers, and monitors classrooms to offer advice as teachers try new techniques. She also does all communications, marketing, and media work for ECC. She lives half the year in Nepal and half the year abroad.
Starting ECC has been the most challenging thing she’s ever undertaken, but she finds it extremely rewarding.
Project Manager
Priyanka Shahi
Priyanka Shahi officially joined ECC in September of 2018 . She is currently enrolled in fourth year of bachelors in business studies at shanker dev campus in Kathmandu.
She spent 2 years working as a teacher at a small primary school in Kathmandu and found a love of working with kids. In addition to that she was a field volunteer for NCEP, an NGO that works in education development, for one and a half years.
She joined ECC because it was an amazing new opportunity for her to learn more about teaching and learning, to experience new things, and discover what can be done to improve the quality of remote and rural schools in her country.
ECC’s project site is the place where she was born, so she has a personal investment in seeing this project succeed. Priyanka is extremely happy to be able to give back to her community. After working intensively alongside Janie, Priyanka has mastered the elements of ECCs active teaching training and approach.
Her roles now are to help run training sessions, and work alongside teachers in the classroom implementing new tactics.
Education Consultant, Community Outreach
Leigh Kaiser
Leigh, being Janie’s older sister and also a former teacher, has been involved with ECC Nepal since her sister co-founded the organization in 2017.
She graduated from the University of Mississippi in 2013 with a degree in Elementary Education. Upon graduation, Leigh began her teaching career and spent 4 years teaching 3rdgrade in rural Mississippi.
During her time as a teacher, she discovered she had to find ways to get creative with the few resources she had access to and developed ways to utilize them across subjects for a plethora of lessons. When Janie began designing ECC’s ATLP training program, Leigh was more than happy to help her brainstorm material options as well as lesson ideas.
In October 2018, Leigh joined her sister, Min, and Priyanka in Nepal for 6 weeks to help with the upcoming ECC projects. She traveled with the team to rural Nepal, and assisted with teacher training, observing teachers and setting up new classrooms with their supply cabinets.
After experiencing ECC’s work first hand, she returned back to St. Louis, Missouri determined to continue her work helping ECC any way she could.
Leigh has loved working alongside her sister, and couldn’t be more proud to be part of such an incredible team of hard workers.