Passion and drive can lead to big change
Highlights
- ACU alumni Pat Price has spent a career building educational capacity in Nepal.
- He and his Nepali colleagues established The Centre for Learning and Children's Rights (CLCR) a not-for-profit that delivers educational and humanitarian projects.
- This year marks Pat's twentieth year working in Nepal.
Pat Price is calling from Kathmandu. More specifically he’s calling from the middle of a cricket field at Heartland Academy, one of the schools he helped establish in Nepal nearly twenty years ago.
He’d just finished up a match with students on “the best day of the week”.
“Democratic Thursday,” he says. “From morning to evening each student gets to decide how they spend their day. The library is open all day, the science labs are open, we have sports of all kinds being played across the yard.”
Students can pursue their own interests, explore ideas and take ownership of their learning for one day a week.
"It's hectic," Pat laughs. "But there's a plan behind everything."
That plan is to provide child centred learning to young people who might otherwise not have access to education full stop.
And it started, in large part, thanks to a broken TV.
In it for the long haul
After studying exercise science at Australian Catholic University’s (ACU) North Sydney Campus and education at Strathfield, Pat worked as a physical education teacher before moving into student wellbeing and learning support. He was particularly drawn to working alongside young people who had become disengaged from education.
While attending a conference in India in 2004 he met two Nepali professionals who invited him to visit their home and experience the challenges facing their education system firsthand.
At the time, Pat says Nepal was one of the “top five least-developed nations in the world”.
“Class sizes were around 70 to 80 students, and classroom violence was prevalent,” he says.
What was supposed to be a six-week trip stretched to twelve weeks and by the flight home, he’d made up his mind.
“My TV screen was not working, and I was deeply upset about that because I’d planned what I was going to watch on the nine-hour flight home. So, I had a lot of time to reflect on my recent experiences, and by the time I landed back in Australia I had decided I needed to establish a charitable foundation,” he said.
He and his new Nepali colleagues soon set about establishing The Centre for Learning and Children's Rights (CLCR), a not-for-profit that delivers educational and humanitarian projects in Nepal.
Flipping the education switch
According to Pat, the journey started in “a dirt field with one or two crumbly buildings”, where Heartland Academy was born.
“We found a dusty, vacant building on the outskirts of Kathmandu – with a massive yard – and signed a 20-year lease with the homeowner,” Pat says.
“The school grew slowly, with just two teachers and 25 students, but over time more and more children trickled in – many of whom had been excluded from other schools.”
The focus was – and still is – on education that is child-centred, democratic, violence-free and open to as many Nepali children and young adults as possible, regardless of age, gender, religion or caste.
It took time to gain momentum and the charity “got rejected plenty of times” in those early years leaving Pat with “times of doubt”.
But he experienced plenty of wins to keep his desire stoked and he saw the impact of the charity's work go a long way.
“I’ve been in a unique position to receive a high-quality education and have significant skills… and I don't want to look back and think what if I didn’t have a go at this,” he says.
Over two decades, the school has grown to over 500 students and 64 teaching and non-teaching staff members, has provided over 2,000 scholarships for predominantly young women and has successfully graduated 1,624 students with higher education qualifications.
The charity has also branched out into a second school in the remote region of Jagbadi in Palpa and a Heartland Centre for Women – a tertiary college based in Kathmandu, established specifically for women across the country, that also operates a health care clinic focusing on screening and the initial treatment of cervical cancer.
“It doesn’t cost a lot to have an impact in Nepal. A single student scholarship costs less than a cup of coffee per day,” Pat says.
“I can go home and turn on any tap and water comes out, I can turn on any switch and electricity is there, I can eat from a supermarket which has the best of the best. These are not available to the everyday person in Nepal, he says.
“These are the things that an education can change.”
Twenty-year cycle
Pat has been up since 2am. It’s late August, the day after flash flooding crashed through parts of Nepal and Tibet, roughly 65 kms north of where Heartland is based.
He’s in an office at his school back in New Zealand, where he lives when he’s not in Nepal, and he’s on edge. He’s been up trying to gather information on who in the team has been affected by the devastation. He’s already thinking ahead.
“We’re in a unique position to be able to do something, whether that be extra scholarships or support with resources. We’re not disaster specialists but we’ve been through a bit as an organisation," he says.
“What is hard is that I know in 48 hours it will be off the news cycle and it won’t be front of mind,” he says.
“But the impact of the disaster will be felt for generations.”
This year marks Pat's twentieth year working in Nepal, his seventieth visit to the country.
“My initial enthusiasm was based on the fact that the local population wanted something different, they wanted a focus on teacher training which also was non-violent in its approach to managing students,” he says.
“There was local passion, and there still is a drive to see change. Nepal is rugged and beautiful and tough and I have a genuine respect for the resilience of the people. It’s inspiring.”
Published 2026