Showing up isn’t a programme. It’s a habit.

Since 2015, New Perimeter, DLA Piper’s pro bono arm, has brought lawyers from its offices around the world to train women lawyers in Nepal, with the Nepal Bar Association and, in several years, UNDP. Few women practise law in Nepal, and there is no requirement for continuing legal education, so for many participants this is their first structured training after qualifying.

For eight years, Pooja has been the programme’s point of contact in Nepal: the person who makes each training happen, from participants and venues to schedules, partners and every detail on the day.

Visiting DLA Piper lawyers have named her in their own published accounts of the programme as the coordinator who made each week run.

Higher Ground Nepal is a Kathmandu social enterprise. Its bakery, café and crafts businesses train and employ women, many of them rebuilding their lives, and fund its community development work.

In its early years, Pooja worked across almost every part of it: business development, marketing and sales, programmes and events, including breast cancer awareness events, and the processes the organisation still runs on.

She is no longer there day to day, but she sits on its board and still steps in with support and encouragement whenever it is needed.

In the last week of September 2024, three days of record rain sent the Roshi River over its banks. Close to eighty people died in Kavrepalanchok alone, and whole settlements along the river were swept away.

Pooja remembers one man who was asleep when the water came at night. By the time he understood what was happening, it had carried him from his village to the next.

She mobilised her community of supporters quickly, and brought what people needed most: water filters, portable power, blankets, food and sanitary pads.

Shortly before midnight on 3 November 2023, an earthquake struck Jajarkot in western Nepal. Homes, schools and roads across the district were destroyed.

When Pooja learned that the school in one remote village had been completely destroyed, she went. She organised temporary shelter, warm clothes for the students, and food and clothing for the children of the school.

It was temporary relief, and it was meant to be. It arrived when it was needed.

When Nepal locked down on 24 March 2020, the first people hit were those who earn each day what they eat that night. Day labourers lost, overnight, the income they needed to feed themselves, let alone their families.

Pooja raised the funds and mobilised a group of volunteers who worked with Hugging Nepal to provide food and water every day for three months, so that day labourers always had a reliable meal to count on.

It meant going out every day, at a time when everyone was being told to stay in.