Here at Craft HQ, we are always fascinated to hear not only how people are using Craft, but where.
Craft fans have long since spread far and wide from our HQ in beautiful Budapest, and we frequently hear from people Crafting all over the world: New York to Nagasaki.
So when Sudip Pokhrel from Kathmandu, Nepal, joined the Craft community and introduced himself with the ice-breaker ‘Hello from the Himalayas!’, we had to know more.
It turned out, Sudip was using Craft for some pretty important stuff. A public health professional, Sudip has 20 years of experience in the sector across both health policy and health systems. Now operating as a freelance consultant, Sudip works with the WHO, UNICEF, international aid agencies, and the US, UK, and German governments, to support public health in developing counties.
We spoke with Sudip to find out how Craft plays its part in his work.
Tell us more about your role as a public health professional
I advise and work with country governments and international organizations to formulate effective public health policies and strengthen national health systems. This could entail, for example, strategies to improve drugs and medicine supply in a country, focused intervention to strengthen maternal and child health, policies to strengthen the quality of health care, fostering public-private partnerships in public health, or designing complex public health projects.
I have primarily worked in Nepal but also briefly in a few other countries. My main clients tend to be international organizations like WHO or UNICEF, western country governments (US, UK, Germany, etc.) supporting public health in developing countries, and international aid agencies.
I also spend about 45 days of the year out in the field, visiting remote Nepali communities and assessing the healthcare situation on the ground.
How have you been using Craft to help with your work?
I write project reports, proposals, research studies, and other snippets across multiple projects using Craft. I mainly use ‘Share to Web’ and/or PDFs to share documents with my clients.
I link my calendar with Craft and use its daily notes feature to take meeting notes.
At times, I take handwritten notes on my iPad using Craft's Sketch feature.
I also use Craft’s integration with Things3 to push specific todo items to Things3.
Why does Craft work for what you're doing?
I love the writing environment and the aesthetically pleasing documents it produces with minimal effort. Inserting pictures, style elements, and formatting is just a breeze with Craft compared to the often clunky interfaces offered by the ‘traditional’ word processing apps.
Craft also inserts images, tables, equations, etc. easily and combines them with proper formatting without additional user effort. Craft is minimal and has most of the features I need. The ‘share to web’ feature is a game changer for me, as I can quickly share reports, proposals, and other documents I produce for clients. As opposed to attaching word docs or PDF files to emails, with Craft’s ‘share to web’ feature, I can control when the link expires.
For clients that prefer PDF or Word Doc files, I can quickly export with proper formatting. If I need to produce complex documents, for example, those requiring TOCs, multiple sections, etc., I usually write the drafts in Craft and export them as Docx to finish in Word later. Spaces and folders work well as repositories to organize documents.
When you share a Craft doc - what reaction do you get?
They love it. Especially in my industry, where most clients are used to dealing with badly formatted Word Docs or PDF files. The simple yet aesthetically pleasing outputs Craft produces are well appreciated.
How do you describe Craft to people who have never heard of it?
Craft offers one of the best writing, note-taking, publishing, and sharing functionalities — all in one package. It is well supported by the developers with frequent updates and new features and is available for both Mac and Windows. For Mac users, it is optimized for the new generation of Macs with Apple chip and seamlessly integrates with iOS devices.
You can read more about Sudip’s backstory and life in Nepal in our People of Craft collection where he talks about photographing majestic raptors and off-road adventures as he visits remote Nepali communities for his work: Healthcare in the Himalayas: A Nepalese Note-Taker.
Start using Craft to manage your daily life. Browse our templates inspired by Sudip's story:
