Prakash Bista wore a gray suit and tie, his dark hair slicked back.

It was, perhaps, the best he’d ever dressed.

About 300 pairs of eyes watched the slightly built 24-year-old Soka student as he stood before a six-judge panel at the Orange County Social Entrepreneurship Competition at UC Irvine.

He glanced around the room. He fidgeted.

Bista’s mission was simple. He had to edge out 10 other finalists – social entrepreneurs from around the world – for a $10,000 prize. The winner would use the money to help humanity.

One finalist had plans to bring affordable solar power to Tanzania. Another pitched a cafe in the Saddleback Valley to support students in need.

As for Bista, if he had $10,000, he would use it to build one more school.

It likely would be a mud and stone structure with a slate roof. But it would be enough to educate about 250 kids in his tiny village of Lalu, nestled deep in the folds of the Himalayan mountains of West Nepal.

“It’s not about the building,” Bista would say. “It’s about education.”

In Bista’s village, there are no roads, running water, electricity or sewers.

Until about five years ago – until Bista – there were no schools in Lalu, either.

KINKO’S AND GOATS

To get to Lalu, one must endure a daylong, 400-mile bus ride from the capital city of Katmandu to Surkhet. After that you take a death-defying journey through the Karnali Highway, a bumpy, rugged, unpaved dirt track to a little town called Jite.

There are no guardrails on this highway. Just a gaping abyss on the other side. It is not uncommon for overloaded buses to drive over the cliffs.

And after that ride you’re still not in Lalu. The journey continues up the mountain, beyond the shantytown of Jite. You’re now in Nepal’s Kalikot district, designated by the United Nations as one of the world’s poorest and most underserved regions.

From Jite, it’s a daylong, practically vertical climb of five miles to get to Lalu.

Bista told the judges a bit about his hometown.

He’d built a school there when he was 19, he said, and he wanted to build 30 more. Each, he explained, would be powered by solar panels and supported by a convenience store, a copy center, a goat farm …

This caught a judge’s attention.

“A Kinko’s with a goat farm?” he asked Bista.

“Yes.”

SCHOOL BUS AND LIGHTS

Going to school was not an option for young Prakash Bista.

The boy would start his day by climbing uphill for 30 minutes to fetch water from a mountain spring. He would then go into the jungle to collect firewood so his mother could cook and heat their home. After that he would cut grass with a sickle to feed the family buffalo.

That was when he was 7.

When he was 8, Prakash traveled with his father to the nearest town, a 100-mile, four-day walk. It was the first time he saw streets, motor vehicles, electric lights.

But that wasn’t what amazed him. What really caught Prakash’s attention was seeing children, his age, dressed in uniforms, carrying books and getting picked up by a bus.

A school bus.

That day, he asked his father: “Can I go to school like those other kids?”

His dad, who had failed 10th grade four times, and his mom, who never saw the inside of a school, talked it over for a month. They decided their son would go to a boarding school 20 miles away.

“I was so happy,” he said. “I was jumping around like I’d won the lottery.”

For the next five years Bista topped his class.

But things were about to change.

GUNS AND A BOULDER

By the time Bista was in seventh grade, the Communist Maoist insurgency was tearing Western Nepal apart.

His school shut down when guerrilla forces threatened to plant a bomb. Bista returned home only to find that his ancestral home had been destroyed in a blast.

The guerrilla forces recruited teenagers to fight on the front lines. Many of Bista’s friends joined the uprising. Bista watched as villagers were killed. His uncle and cousin, both high-ranking commanders in the guerrilla forces, were killed.

Bista remembers thinking: “I don’t want war. I want to go to school.”

He begged his father to send him away to Katmandu, Nepal’s capital city. Because of his good grades, Bista got a full scholarship.

In Katmandu, he was able to attend high school uninterrupted. But it was 500 miles from Lalu. Over the next five years, Bista saw his parents one time.

When Bista was in 12th grade his father was injured in a construction accident; a boulder fell on him and crushed his spine, leaving him paralyzed. Bista returned home to help. But three months later his father was dead.

During this period, Bista’s mother was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease. Six months after his father’s death, his mother took her last breath, her head on Bista’s shoulder.

“I was devastated and depressed,” said Bista. “I’d missed nine months of school. But I couldn’t get myself to go back.

“It was the worst time of my life.”

But in Lalu, life was changing. The civil war was over; the Maoists had signed a peace accord with the government. But illiteracy and poverty were still rampant.

Bista realized he had something others in his village didn’t; he could read and write. He had an education. It was a gift.

“I realized how fortunate I was. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I started thinking about what I could do to help my village.”

That was when Bista was 18.

SNAKES AND GHEE

Bista did two things over the next year: He finished high school and decided to turn his bomb-ravaged house into an elementary school.

To his surprise, villagers in Lalu helped.

They cut bamboo for the walls and stones for the foundation. They brought slate rock from the mountains to build a roof.

Bista and his friends decided to call their project the Modern Model Residential School.

Bista took out a $30,000 loan to build the school’s first concrete building, hire a helicopter to bring solar panels, computers, TV screens to Lalu’s new school. Solar power could energize the computers and even a satellite television.

For the first time, kids at the school watched a TV program, a documentary about snakes.

The children were mesmerized. But when one of them went home and told his father he saw snakes – hundreds of them – in his school, the man ran to the school with sticks asking Bista where the snakes were.

“I had to calm him down and explain how a TV works,” Bista said.

In three years the school grew to more than 150 students.

Bista and the board of villagers who ran the school came up with a system. Parents who had jobs would pay about $100 a year in fees. Those who couldn’t afford the fees would volunteer 30 days a year at the school in exchange for their children’s education.

The volunteer program grew. Children from neighboring villages enrolled.

Bista decided to try a new way of funding the school. Parents would go to the city and buy hard-to-find items – soap, toothpaste, sugar – to sell at a tiny convenience store in Lalu.

Villagers could exchange homemade items, things like clarified butter, known as ghee, for necessities. Bista and his crew would then sell the ghee in neighboring markets to raise more funds.

As the school flourished, Bista started to think about his own education.

He applied to American universities. He was drawn to Soka University because, he says, the institution offered “the tools to change the world.” And a full scholarship.

CASH AND A PLAN

In Irvine, in front of the six judges and the 300 other people, Bista calmly explained how goats and a copy center help support a school.

“Goats take up very little space. And they eat what’s found in nature. In one year, we were able to double the number of goats and sell them for meat.

“The copy center was the only one of its kind in the area that could cater to public schools, government offices and businesses.

“I was just a teenager, a high school student, trying to make things work,” he added.

Bista’s goal, he told the judges, is to build 30 schools over the next 10 years. He’ll build them in villages near Lalu, in places where children still have little access to basic education.

Last July, he spent a little over a month in Nepal, reaching out to public schools in his district, testing basic literacy skills in English and math and finalizing more locations for two more Modern Model schools that he wants to build over the next year.

Bista, now a sophomore, lives on Soka University’s Aliso Viejo campus. When he’s not in class or immersed in projects, Bista works on his school’s website and explores crowdfunding opportunities.

He thinks about what more he can do for his village, and beyond.

He doesn’t own a car. He rarely eats out. He hasn’t been to Disneyland. Sometimes, he’ll take a campus shuttle to the Irvine Spectrum. But he doesn’t shop.

“To me, every dollar is money that can be used for children’s education in Nepal,” he said. “That’s my only focus. Nothing else is more important to me right now.”

In Irvine, Bista won first place in the competition, $10,000, good for one more school in the mountains.

“It was a surprise, for sure,” he said later.

“I just spoke from my heart.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-7909 or dbharath@ocregister.com