What should you do when you can’t find the people you’re supposed to write about?

Keep looking until you find them. That’s what UPIU writer Rajneesh Bhandari had to do when he accepted a UPIU assignment to write about autism in Nepal. When he first called a few autism centers, he had no luck.

Photo by Rajneesh Bhandari

“’They used to stay here a year ago,’ ‘This is not their number,’ ‘I don’t know much about them,’ were the general answers I got,” said Rajneesh, who is studying journalism at Nepal’s  Tribhuwan University.

But he didn’t give up.

“I finally got one care center that was working,” he said.

Rajneesh set an appointment to visit the center. When he arrived, he found a group of autistic children working on art projects. The center provided Rajneesh with anecdotes for his story.

Over the course of nearly two weeks, Rajneesh scrambled to find out more about autism, but there was little he could verify.

Rajneesh Bhandari

“The saddest part is there is no official data that tells how many children in Nepal are living with autism,” he said. “Parents were hopeful that they will be able to network with other children (with) autism and support them.”

Rajneesh found that Nepalese parents aren’t satisfied with the government’s current lack of services for their autistic children. They told him they want to make the government more aware of the growing rate of autism.

Rajneesh usually writes about politics, poverty and war. It was a challenge for him to write about autism, a disease that many countries around the world don’t even recognize. But now, Rajneesh has a new area of expertise to add to his list of topics he can cover.

Read Rajneesh’s story here.

Are you interested in writing about autism in your country? Contact Anna Young, UPIU’s Community Manager, to find out more. You can read her story about autism in the U.S. here.