Ladies for Ladies
“When women progress, we all progress”
A WOMEN EMPOWERMENT GET TOGETHER WAS ORGANISED ON 21 October 2020 BY SAPANA VILLAGE SOCIAL IMPACT. LADIES FROM OUR TRAINING PROGRAMMES AND THE MUSAHAR COMMUNITY MET, SHARED THEIR LIFE EXPERIENCES AND DISCUSSED WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND EMPOWERMENT.
A women empowerment campaign was successfully launched with the slogan, “When women progress, we all progress”. The campaign was a great success with the involvement of 9 of our wildlife graduates, 11 drivers in training and 23 Musahars women from the Sapana Musahar women’s group. The campaign was held in the multifunctional building of Sapana School.
Empowering the socio-economically disadvantaged women and advocating against child marriage and child rights were the main themes of the campaign. In the first event of the campaign we conducted a motivational workshop for the Musahar women of Ratnanagar-7, Chitwan, Nepal. The workshop was facilitated by Mr. Anil Aryal and Mr. Min Raj Sapkota. They both talked about: What are women’s rights and what is violence against women? How to handle it? Where to report such cases? How to prevent violence against women and preserve women’s rights? The chairman of Sapana Village Social Impact, Mr. Dhruba Giri shared his ideas and said to focus on what we want to achieve in life. Make life as valuable as money - no matter in what form it, it is always valuable.
The Musahar ladies talked about alcoholism, child marriage, school dropout and the patriarchal society as their problems in the community and are looking for the right opportunity to change the lives they are living. One of the participants, Mrs. Reshami Majhi expressed her happiness for getting the opportunity to do vegetable farming with the help of Sapana Village Social Impact and believes this will be a milestone in her upcoming bright future. She said, “Musahars are not only meant to collect fish and snails from the rivers, we can do other work and if we start doing vegetable farming and selling on the market our men's thoughts will change and we will be working together for the betterment of ourselves and the community”. “We used to go to work in hotels but now there is no tourism business so we go to work in the fields on a daily basis, husbands earn and spend their earnings on drinking and we bring food for our family with the money we earn and our husbands don’t like it that we go to work because according to them when we go to work we have extra marital affairs”, said Manju Majhi.
Another participant, Mrs. Parbati Poudel said, “I would like to thank SVSI for providing this beautiful opportunity to be a driver, I am sure to be an example to many ladies who are lacking the opportunity and thinking women can't do this type of work”.
Ashmita Godar, a lady guide graduate, talked about her experience as a guide. In the beginning she was so afraid as English was a challenge for her but slowly she learned from her seniors and colleagues and now she is enjoying her job and making a good income out of it. She also talked about her Musahar friend to whom she suggested not to get married early, but her friend got married and now as a result of early marriage she is having many health and family issues.
All the participants were provided a healthy lunch during the programme.
After listening to many stories and visual presentations on women violence, child marriage and health and sanitation the Musahar women seemed motivated to do vegetable farming, bring their children to school regularly, proper use of toilet and avoiding early marriage.
We also were able to provide food packages to all 43 ladies present.