No Pages, Just People: An Afternoon of Stories Over Tea

Biratnagar | 12 August 2026
There was no bookshelf to browse and no textbook to open.
Instead, young people sat across from people with very different journeys and listened.
That was the idea behind “Chiya Sanga Katha A Human Library Experience,” held in Biratnagar on 12 August 2026 to mark International Youth Day.
Organized by GOALS Foundation in collaboration with NYCA Biratnagar, EWBN-PU, and Birat Yuwa Bicharak Manch, the programme brought young participants into conversations with Dr. Ramchandra Adhikari, poet and literary figure Seema Abhas, and journalist and literary personality Anantaraj Neupane.
Each conversation offered something different: a life experience, a struggle, a decision, a lesson or simply a perspective that the participants might not encounter in their everyday circles.
That is what made the Human Library format different from a conventional youth programme. The speakers were not there simply to deliver prepared talks. Participants could listen, ask questions and respond to the stories being shared.
For EWBN-PU, the programme was also a reminder that learning does not always happen inside a classroom or through a technical manual. Engineering students, like any other young people, have much to learn from the experiences of people working in completely different fields.
Over tea and conversation, the afternoon became less about a formal programme and more about people meeting peopleand learning from the lives they had lived.