Kathmandu, Sept. 3 -- Durga Buda is in Grade 10 in a school in the remote mountains of western Nepal. Not long ago, she saw a personal computer for the first time.

Many young women in this socially conservative region are limited to housework, herding livestock, before being married off. But for Durga, the flickering computer monitor is a portal to a whole new world out there - a world filled with possibilities she had never imagined.

Through a peer-led after school program known as EDGE (English and Digital for Girls' Education) Durga is no longer intimidated by the computer, soon browsing the Internet and speaking English with confidence.

Knowledge of English and access to the Internet combine to give Durga and her fellow students ac...