Kathmandu, June 27, 2018: The fifth session of EmpowHER 2018 was held on Saturday, June 23rd which focused on Women and Citizenship, Time Management and Introspective Leadership.
The guest speakers for this session, Aruna Rana Thapa, International Gender and Development Expert and Tulasa Lata Amatya from Community Action Centre Nepal and Tulasa Lata Thapa gave life changing information and knowledge about ‘Citizenship and Women.’ Both being equally strong women activists who have previously worked for anti trafficking programs and the decriminalization of sex workers, they taught us how important citizenship is for identification and to claim our rights. Another insight they provided was that trafficking is directly connected to citizenship. We all learnt that there are still problems and challenges for women’s right to citizenship in Nepal. We learnt the impacts of discriminatory citizenship laws on women and the challenges that some women face. There are certain laws especially made for women regarding citizenship but there has not been any implementation. This session was on the top of the plateau because we actually realized that we are so privileged to have gained access to our citizenship so easily.
Another valuable lesson was conducted by the Ujyalo Foundation team on ‘Time management’. We all realized that we should prioritize the important things in life first (family, love, health, mental health) then only we ought to add rest of our tasks to keep our lives running and in balance. After that, a session on ‘Introspective leadership’ was conducted where we all concluded that leadership is fluid and it involves deep reflection about ourselves.
As a reflective exercise, we all were asked to enter the balcony of our lives and to reflect our journey, the results came out quite amazing. The diverse group of compassionate and enthusiastic change-makers shared the challenges they overcame and how being in this cohort polished not only their ideas and visions but also their positive attitude, visualization and received a boost of confidence. In one way or another everyone is extremely grateful that we are all in this together and are utilizing every aspect of exposure that Ujyalo Foundation has been providing.
By: Shraddha Rai and Taniya Subba
Shraddha Rai and Taniya Subba are changemakers of EmpowHER 2018.
