Home Kathmandu Urban girls go to a rural village for community learning (EmpowHER Diaries)

Urban girls go to a rural village for community learning (EmpowHER Diaries)

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EmpowHER cohort reaches out to the women at Odari village in Kapilvastu District

This 13th of August, the EmpowHER cohort went to the Lions Women Skills Training Center (LWSTC) at Odari village in Kapilvastu and conducted a session on ‘Community Learning: Pushing boundaries, mindset and self’, designed to give them with an overview of the community that exists outside of the Kathmandu valley.

The main motive of taking the session to there was to push the EmpowHER ladies beyond the boundaries where they could get down to the community level and get the hang.

Located at Odari village of Hathausa VDC in Kapilvastu, in a driving distance of 9:30 hours from Kathmandu, LWSTC there has been providing sewing and vocational trainings for the women belonging to diverse locations and backgrounds in Nepal. Currently, the centre has 26 girls from different districts of Nepal residing there and getting trainings for different skills. In addition, the centre has also been providing trainings to more than 30 girls from the local community on a daily scholar basis. The LWSTC has been providing free trainings including the lodgings and foodings for a year to those women coming from far flung places, especially the single women, women from disadvantaged communities and unemployed women from various districts of Nepal.

For the session, the cohort was divided into seven groups with the community women where each participant with the women from the community had to perform SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis on their idea and self. The session provided the cohort and the community women with the much needed sharing and learning opportunity. The session also had an icebreaker activity, with four groups having 8 people each in a group, as part of which they had to use non-verbal communication to guide the team through trust and management. The activity gave both the cohort members and the community women with a much needed space to build better interaction.

EmpowHER session in Odari

The community in Odari has women from diverse backgrounds working for a common mission. It was a wonderful opportunity for the EmpowHER ladies to visit the community and put themselves on these women’s shoes and experience the life out there. That was the whole point of staying with the community and engaging with them. It was a unique experience for the cohort, different than that could have been gained from reading or hearing about the community. Witnessing the community first hand and getting involved in different activities was a wonderful experience for the ladies. Despite the unbearable heat, it became a wonderful stay with the community.

EmpowHER session in Odari

The programme was organized as part of the 14-weeks long training session of EmpowHER and was 11th in the series. Started in the year 2015 with a belief that empowered women will empower society as a whole, the programme provides a platform for women to exude their ideas, exercise leadership, and contribute as an effective member to the community. EmpowHER seeks to ensure that the aspiring women leaders will be exposed to innovative learning through various trainings in leadership, networking, mentorship, and designing and implementing projects that help other marginalized women ultimately create a society where all the women are empowered.