Our Chef's story

A short story on empowering women on how to be successful.

The initiation of our cooking course started from Sakuntala, head chef, originally from the Eastern part of Nepal. After finishing her basic schooling, she migrated to Kathmandu in 2008 for opportunities to look after her family. The same year she joined socialtours as her first job. Now in her 11th year in socialtours she still has magical spices up her sleeves. It was in the year 2011, when Raj got an idea of starting up cooking class for foreigners with the choice of 3 evergreen authentic meals of Nepal i.e. Daal-bhat, Mo:mo and Aloo paratha. Initially, Sakuntala was equally excited and nervous; excited because she could upgrade her skills and share the knowledge she possessed and nervous because English was not her first language. However, due to persistent learning enthusiasm of Sakuntala, she now communicates fluently in English.

Cooking class took a positive impact on another chef Asmita who is also from an Eastern part of Nepal. Unmarried Asmita came to Kathmandu in 2013, got employed by social tours and is now a happy mother to one beautiful daughter. Asmita gets excited whenever our clients choose Momo as it is her personal favourite food. Besides working in socialtours, she is on the process of finishing her graduation in Humanities. She is good at communicating in English. Whenever there’s no cooking class, our chefs cook delicious curry, noodles other than the regular lunch.

The domino effect from the cooking class is that team socialtours get to enjoy a healthy, sumptuous lunch. The chefs get a monetary incentive for every class they conduct. This monetary incentive increases the disposable income of the chefs.