Journalist and Filmmaker Bidhya Chapagain was born on August 23, 1982. Her birthplace is in Gothatar, Kathmandu. Her parents were farmers and has a brother Mahesh who used to write in the newspaper. She is popular as presenter of “Sajha Sawal” and Co-founder of “Herne Katha” (हेर्ने कथा). Talking about her education she has completed her bachelor’s degree from ‘Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus’ in Journalism and began sending articles to Gorkhapatra(newspaper), Yuwa Manch(magazine) while studying.
She has journalistic experience in radio, TV and newspaper. She joined as a presenter in of “Sajha Sawal”, a popular TV Debate Show in July 2014 produced by BBC media action in Nepal. She quit her job in January 2018 in BBC buy you can still find her work at www.bbc.co.uk website . During that period she has interviewed many popular politicians, president, prime minister etc. While working in BBC she traveled to many places across Nepal saw different people, places and their untold stories which was not covered by the media.
How Herne Katha began ?
She was not satisfied with her job and share it with her colleague Kamal Kumar. Media was only covering stories about famous people, crime etc and her colleague felt the same way. They decided to start from different perspective and the programme “Herne Katha”, a web series produced by Tana Bana Digital in Nepal began to tell people’s stories. Youtube was the platform they choose on Dec 22, 2017 and got massive engagement which crossed 581K subscribers, 53,687,474 views on YouTube till Sep 3, 2021. At the begining, she self-fundend this web series with Kamal kumar because has no revenue and was self funded for almost one and half year. After that they started accepting sponsorships. Other revenue sources are YouTube earnings and audience contribution on Patron.
People saw stories they have never imagined before. It is the untold stories of ordinary people which hepled Nepalese and the global community to explore society, culture, lifestyle, problems etc which they have never heard of. It became the voice of voiceless people for which she awarded by the Open society foundations (OSF) for the organizational support, the best non-fiction at Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (KIMFF 2018) for the documentary ‘The Man Who Died’ and at the Independent Short Awards, they won Best Documentary Short (2019) for the same documentary.
Every alternate Tuesdays they upload new episodes in their official YouTube Channel. Besides, you can watch the show on Kantipur TV at 6:30 PM every Tuesday. First female host of BBC Sajha sawal Bidhya is married and has a child.
Website: https://hernekatha.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hernekatha
Herne Katha Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/hernekatha
Herne katha IG: https://www.instagram.com/hernekatha
Herne katha Twitter: https://twitter.com/hernekatha
Herne katha Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/hernekatha
Herne katha on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8103440/
Herne katha Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hernekatha
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