|  Bibhor
Baral
is the editor and webmaster of the
online children magazine Ketaketi.org.
The review of Ketaketi.org is available
HERE.
He
is a fifth semester student of Bachelor
of Information Management (BIM), a
four years IT course at Tribhubhan
University. Beside computer, he is
also very interested in literature.
During
last month I had chance to interview
him. In the interview, he talked about
his experience with Ketaketi.org.
Please email any comments at info@nepalnet.net
Q. How did
the Ketaketi.org started?
Bibhor:
Once I happened to visit
a popular cyber cafe. Along with the
seniors, I saw few teens there, enjoying
the Internet. When I observed them
thoroughly, I found them surfing around
vulgar sites and having useless chat.
I returned home with heavy heart and
thought a lot about it. In my opinion,
the children should have visited the
sites made for them. Surprisingly,
when I searched for children oriented
sites, I could not find any good Nepali
site made for them. Then a desire
for designing a site for them produced
inside me.
 In
the mean time, I happened to meet
famous child litterateur Kartikeya
Ghimire and I shared the idea with
him. Then Dhiraj Baral joined our
team. Finally, we three decided to
start an e-magazine for children.
Famous literary-journalist Rochak
Ghimire suggested us the name of the
site as 'ketaketi'. Now the result
is in front of you.
Q. Being a new
website, what challenges are you and
your group facing to
maintain and further develop the website?
How are you dealing with those
challenges?
Bibhor:
 Firstly,
we are finding difficulties in reaching
to the children. We are unable to
give big advertisements making children
aware about our site. Though, with
the help from friends like you we
expect to reach to them soon. Secondly,
to give regularity to the magazine
we are in the search of sponsors and
for that we are making arrangements.
We are confident on getting sponsors
in future. The principals of 11 private
schools, which are
under Balpatrakarita Tatha Balsahitya
Puraskar Samiti have promised to help
us. We are very much optimistic since
then.
Q. Are there
any plans for major future changes
to the website?
Bibhor:
We have already formed
one year schedule of the magazine.
Our main aim is to develop ketaketi
as an official children e-magazine
of Nepal. In this regard, from coming
issue we are going to start a sketched
photo gallery of famous Nepali child
litterateur which are sketched by
Shanta Hitang.
Our next goal is to
facilitate people to make contact
with the persons, organizations, magazines,
sites, etc., regarding children. For
that we are developing 'Children Contact
Forum'. One can find phone numbers,
email address of the children related
peoples, organizations etc in the
forum. It will be published as a book
as well as one can find it in our
site.
In addition, we are
trying to translate famous Nepali
child writings in English and publish
them in our site. By this, we want
to make worldwide exposure of Nepali
Child Literature.
We too want to make
children participate to our site.
We are going to start about 10 types
of quizs from coming issue. About
60 children will be awarded in each
issue. We hope it will help in development
of children's personality and feeling
of competition in them.
Q. Beside this
website, has your group or you done
any other websites?
Bibhor:
I am a student of Bachelor
of Information Management (BIM), a
four years IT course of TU and I am
in fifth semester right now. I too
have deep interest in Literature.
When I firstly got introduced with
HTML for the first time during my
first semester, built a site for Nepali
Literature whose address is: www.geocities.com/nepaliliterature.
In that site I also put an issue of
Rachana literary magazine. Rachana
is more than 30 years old
Nepali literary magazine. Probably
it is the first Nepali literary magazine
to have a web site. It is now available
in www.geocities.com/rachananepali.
A part from them I have
also made site of REHDON College,
Samakhusi as a project work of first
semester. Its address is www.cab.edu.np/rehdoncollege.
Similarly, www.teleshoppingnepal.com
is also another site which I made
during my studies.
Q. Any suggestions
you want to give to other Nepali Webmaster
who are making child or teen oriented
websites?
Bibhor:
I want to request Nepali Webmasters
to think about our motherland. Our
work should directly or indirectly
act as a constructing brick for the
country. Children are the future of
the country. So, for the bright future
of Nepal we should give them better
knowledge and opportunities through
our sites. I want to request Webmasters
to love children but not to abuse
them.
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