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Hello!

I'm a 21 year old photojournalist from a very small town called Kongsberg, up here in the cold winter land of Norway. With just 24.000 inhabitants it's not so much to speak of, compared to the huge amount of people in Bangladesh and Dhaka.

I'm especially looking forward to this trip, since it's the first time I'm outside of Europe. I've heard from other students, it will be quite a remarkable change of environment, and I'm very excited about it. Photography has, for the last three years, been my deepest passion. I started my career in a small local newspaper in my hometown. I did a lot both writing and photography, but after a while I realized that it was to tell stories with pictures, that really was on my mind. I actually won first and second prize in news category in a press photo competition in the county where Kongsberg lies.

After a year in the local paper, I decided to attend the photojournalist bachelor program at Oslo University Collage. Which we just started out on our second year this fall. I'm currently living in the capitol of Norway, Oslo. Where I do some freelance jobs, but mostly studying at the moment.

I'm with the 6 of the 13 students in our class, who are travelling to Nepal. I hope and believe that it will be a memorable trip, and a chance to make some great photo reportages.

This is my ideas on Nepal:

YCL (Young Communist League) a bunch of criminals or a political group?

Even tough the Maoist Party in Nepal has been unarmed; the youth group of the official political party is used as a guerilla group, to spread fear among the people in Nepal. It's a cheap way to get around the disarmament of the Maoist army. Still they have an «armed» force, which they can use to their best interest. I want to get inside a local group in YCL. Do they really know what their mother party does? Are they really interested in politics? Or are they just a bunch of criminals, used as a tool?It can be a difficult idea to do, because YCL might be a hard group to find and to get in on. It's not certain they want to be photographed at all.

Terai - the new Nepali centre?

The south part of Nepal (Terai) is being heavy populated at the moment. Everybody wants to move down from the high mountain plateau, to the lower areas where it's more agriculture friendly. It has also been discussed to move the capitol to Terai.

Girl/child soldiers

Under the civil war, the Maoist army recruited thousands of child soldiers; also a lot of girls were recruited. Now, after the war is over there are still a lot of camps around with child soldiers. The Maoists started earlier this year a process to free the children from these camps. But have they freed all the child soldiers yet? Many former child soldiers display greater severity of mental health problems, such as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.