Dipesh Maharjan, Senior Program Manager CORN
Sneha Khadka, Communication Coordinator CORN
Date Published
October 13, 2026
Estimated Reading Time
8 mins
Calls Over Ridges Nepal (CORN), in partnership with Khijidemba Rural Municipality and Chandeshwari Secondary School, conducted a structured series of career counselling sessions for students in Grades 7 to 10. The sessions helped students explore future opportunities while examining how closely their career aspirations aligned with their personal interests.
Beyond the data, the sessions also revealed how meaningful conversations, exposure to inspiring role models, and opportunities for self-reflection can shape the way young people begin to imagine their futures.
Are Your Career Choices Truly What You Want?
“What do you want to become?”
For many young people, this is one of the most difficult questions they are asked.
The answer often comes quickly: doctor, teacher, police officer, engineer. But beneath those answers lies another question that is rarely explored: Is that career truly connected to what the student enjoys, values, and naturally excels at?
Located approximately 220 km from Kathmandu, Khijidemba is a rural municipality where students often have limited access to career guidance opportunities.
Khijidemba Rural Municipality recognised that students’ career decisions were often influenced by family expectations, social perceptions, or limited awareness of the wide range of career pathways available.
While students had aspirations for their futures, many lacked the guidance and exposure needed to make informed career choices. To address this gap, the municipality partnered with CORN to provide structured career counselling, helping students understand their interests, strengths, and values before making important academic and career decisions.
Three Key Observations Behind the Data
Among 491 students whose responses provided sufficient data at Chandeshwari Secondary School, 317 students (64.6%) demonstrated meaningful alignment between their stated career goals and their personal interests.
This suggests that nearly two out of every three students already possess a solid foundation from which they can make informed career decisions. However, the remaining 35.4% showed a noticeable gap between the careers they aspire to pursue and the activities or interests they genuinely enjoy.
Rather than being a cause for concern, this finding highlights exactly why structured career counselling matters. When identified early, these gaps can be addressed before students make critical educational and career decisions.
Beyond the overall findings, three patterns consistently emerged throughout the counselling sessions.
First, students who aspired to careers in healthcare and education frequently identified sports as their strongest area of personal interest. Similarly, many students interested in security and uniformed services demonstrated a greater inclination toward arts and creative fields.
Second, and perhaps most significantly, career-interest misalignment increased as students progressed into higher grades. As students moved closer to making important academic and career decisions, the relationship between what they wanted to become and what genuinely interested them became less coherent.
Third, female students showed slightly lower alignment between their career goals and personal interests than male students. This indicates an area that deserves continued observation and support in future programming, including opportunities that respond more closely to the needs of different students.
These findings highlight the importance of helping students explore their interests and aspirations early, while providing continued guidance as they approach important decisions about their education and careers.
Positive Role Models Help Students Reimagine What Is Possible
Throughout the counselling sessions, students listened to speakers whose own journeys reflected perseverance, discipline, and determination. Among them was Kunjang Chopel Sherpa, Nepal Police’s first female Everest summiteer, whose personal story encouraged students to believe in their abilities, overcome challenges, and pursue their goals with confidence.
Her story was a powerful demonstration of perseverance, leadership, and courage. By sharing her journey of overcoming challenges and standing on the world’s highest peak, she challenged traditional stereotypes surrounding women’s roles and reminded students that career goals should be shaped by passion, determination, and ability rather than gender expectations.
For many girls growing up in rural communities, meeting a woman who had broken barriers in a traditionally male-dominated profession expanded their understanding of what was possible. Seeing her pursue an ambitious goal helped transform what might once have seemed distant or unattainable into something they could genuinely believe was possible for themselves.
These conversations extended beyond occupations, touching on resilience, self-belief, and the understanding that one’s circumstances do not have to define one’s future.
Listening to Students and Supporting Their Dreams
Beyond the survey findings, the discussions themselves revealed something equally meaningful.
Students participated actively, asked thoughtful questions, and demonstrated genuine curiosity about educational opportunities, career pathways, and personal development. Their enthusiasm suggested that many were not lacking ambition; rather, they had rarely been given opportunities to openly explore their aspirations or discuss the uncertainties surrounding their futures.
The sessions became more than career guidance. They became spaces where students could express their thoughts and feel heard.
Alongside a better understanding of themselves, students also strengthened their confidence and communication skills. Those who initially hesitated to speak gradually began asking questions, participating in discussions, and expressing their aspirations more openly.
Sometimes, what young people need most is not immediate answers, but someone willing to believe in their potential before they fully believe in themselves.
During group discussions, students shared the reasons behind their career aspirations, reflecting on the interests, motivations, and influences that shaped their future goals.
One response appeared again and again:
“To earn money.”
At first glance, this may seem like a lack of ambition or imagination. In reality, it reflects the economic realities many families face.
Across Nepal, migration and overseas employment have become familiar pathways to financial security. Many students have grown up watching their parents, siblings, relatives, and even neighbours leave home in search of work. For them, earning money and improving their families’ living conditions may be the strongest and most familiar model of success they have witnessed.
This does not mean that they lack dreams. Rather, it highlights how deeply the realities of their surroundings can shape the way they imagine their futures, and how powerful a real-life role model can be in broadening those possibilities.
As the discussions continued, students also shared aspirations that extended beyond financial security.
Many wanted to support their families, create stable futures, and become people who could make a positive difference in their communities. Their responses reflected maturity beyond their years. Rather than chasing prestigious careers or social status, many were searching for opportunities to build meaningful and secure lives for themselves and the people they care about.
These conversations reminded the counselling team that career guidance is just as much about listening to young people and providing emotional support as it is about advising them on career choices.
Why Career Alignment Matters
Choosing a career that does not align with one’s genuine interests often carries long-term consequences. Students may experience declining motivation, struggle to complete further education or vocational training, face greater difficulty sustaining employment, and lose confidence in their chosen path.
Research on extracurricular participation by Randy Brown, Ph.D., an Area Specialist with the Children, Youth and Family Team at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, further reinforces this approach. The research suggests that meaningful engagement in extracurricular activities can support positive youth development and reduce involvement in risky behaviours.
Such experiences are not simply activities beyond the classroom. They play a meaningful role in helping young people discover what they genuinely enjoy and where their strengths lie.
For this reason, CORN’s career counselling approach is not about directing students toward specific professions or deciding their futures for them. Instead, it provides young people with the space to better understand themselves, explore realistic opportunities, and make informed decisions that align with their interests, strengths, values, and circumstances.
Understanding oneself is the foundation of making informed career decisions.
Building a Stronger Support System for Lasting Change
Teachers in Nepal often manage large classrooms while balancing a range of teaching and administrative responsibilities, leaving little time or access to specialised career guidance resources. Expecting schools alone to fill this gap is neither practical nor sustainable.
A single counselling session can begin a conversation, but a lasting impact requires continuous support.
For career guidance to create meaningful change, it should become a regular part of school life rather than a one-time intervention. As students grow and gain new experiences, they need opportunities to revisit their goals. Schools and local governments also need systems that allow students’ development and needs to be followed over time.
This is particularly important for students in rural communities, where access to information and opportunities for career exposure remains limited. Regular interactions with professionals from diverse backgrounds can broaden perspectives, challenge existing assumptions, and help students recognise possibilities they may never have previously considered.
Continued guidance and mentoring can transform curiosity into confidence and aspirations into achievable plans.
Families and communities also play an essential role. Young people develop confidence and a sense of direction not only inside classrooms but through the encouragement and guidance of the adults around them.
The continued partnership and investment of Khijidemba Rural Municipality demonstrate how local governments can support students’ career exploration through long-term, systematic approaches rather than isolated activities.
By working together, schools, local governments, families, and communities can build a stronger support system that accompanies young people as they explore their interests, make decisions, and shape their futures.
Looking Ahead: Helping Every Child Believe They Can Choose Their Future
Whether inspired by the story of Nepal’s first female police Everest summiteer or encouraged through conversations that helped them reflect on their own strengths and interests, many students left the sessions carrying something more valuable than career advice.
They gained greater confidence in their ability to shape their futures through the choices they make, the effort they invest, and the support they receive along the way.
Throughout the sessions, one message became increasingly clear: students are not short of dreams; they are short of opportunities to explore them.
CORN will continue working alongside Khijidemba Rural Municipality and participating schools to design the next phase of career counselling support.
Future efforts will place particular emphasis on students in higher grades, where career-interest misalignment becomes more pronounced, while ensuring that female students receive equal access to structured guidance, inspiring role models, and opportunities for personal growth that encourage them to challenge stereotypes, build confidence, and pursue careers based on their interests and potential.
The goal is to make public community schools places where young people can discover not only who they are and what they can become, but also receive the guidance, confidence, and support needed to build futures they genuinely want. In doing so, these efforts can also help strengthen school enrolment and retention.
Ultimately, the most meaningful outcome of career counselling is not simply helping a student choose a profession. It is helping them believe that they can choose their own future.
And this is not the end of career counselling, but the beginning!
About the author
Dipesh Maharjan
Dipesh is CORN’s Senior Program Manager
and is based in Kathmandu, Nepal
Sneha Khadka
Sneha is CORN’s Communication Coordinator
and is based in Kathmandu, Nepal
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