Kathmandu Women Empowerment

Background

Gender equality is a big concern for women in Nepal as they face discrimination due to the entitled patriarchal system in the country. Women are dependent on their father or husband for their livelihood. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation and no access to opportunities. 

Challenge

To bring change in the society and empower women only improving education and literacy is the way forward. Women are illiterate thus have no access to information and knowledge in any language. Therefore, they are considered inferior to men. As per 2010, only 17.5% women above the age of 25 had a secondary education. In such a scenario, women often don’t even realise their potential and can’t use opportunities that come forward.

SBB Intervention 

We collaborate with various local grass-root organizations to remove the barriers facing Nepali women. By providing classes both in Hindi and English in addition to life skills and self-employment workshops. Also, we work with self-support female groups who want to earn their own income from self-employment and we teach them various vocational skills that can make them competent in the market.. Volunteers are highly demanded in this project to ensure that they enable knowledge sharing and conducting workshops to enhance the skills of the women and empower them to take steps for their self-realization and improvement.

  Main tasks of the volunteers:

  • Teaching English and basic computer skills
  • Teaching how to use smart phones if available
  • Provide some creative workshops to create a learning environment, some women feel that education and knowledge is something meant for men
  • Deliver vocational trainings like stitching classes, make-up, beautician classes and more to provide entrepreneurship capabilities
  • Running workshops on the importance of a healthy lifestyle
  • Raising awareness about menstrual hygiene and pregnancy
  • Organizing fun activities to make women feel connected and motivated
  • Create a trustworthy environment to share thoughts & ideas and encourage dialogue
  • Help local NGO prepare documentation, research,  write proposal of projects for women empowerment and value addition tasks
  1. Project duration: 1-24 weeks
  2. Beneficiaries: women of various communities, young girls, girl schools
  3. Number of direct beneficiaries: 10-15/ can be also more depending on the topics covered by the volunteer
  4. Working days: 5 days a week, weekend is off
  5. Volunteering hours: depends on the project availability, usually 10:00am-4:00pm
  6. Skills/ qualifications required: no qualification needed
  7. Age criteria: open for teenagers, adults and elders
  8. Gender: due to the nature of the program, we prefer female volunteers as the beneficiaries who are women will open up easily and communicate freely
  • Pre-arrival assistance
  • Detailed pre-arrival orientation and cultural awareness info
  • Pick-up from Kathmandu International Airport
  • A detailed orientation about Nepal, project, cultural responsibility and things to remember in Nepal
  • Accommodation with host family (sharing occupancy)
  • Breakfast & Dinner (Home-made Nepalese meals)
  • Wi-Fi or internet access
  • Guidance to figure out the local transportation
  • Drop at Kathmandu International Airport
  • Logistics & program assistance if required
  • Emergency support

In Kathmandu our team will allocate you with a host family that lives not far from your project. Host families are carefully chosen safe accommodation option to ensure cultural immersion as the volunteers can see the local customs and traditions, share food together and see the neighborhood with their hosts. Hosts are generally an extended family but you can come across nuclear families two, so based on the available number of bedrooms, our teammates decide how many participants can stay in one host family. Breakfast and dinner are included in the program and it is home-made local food while lunch can be easily arranged by the volunteers from nearby the project areas. It’s safe and also affordable and this way volunteers have freedom of choosing what they like once a day.

Facilities at the home-stay :

  • Shared bedroom
  • Western washroom with toilet & shower
  • Hot & cold water
  • Filtered water
  • Common Fridge
  • Common semi-automatic washing machine
  • Kitchen access to cook food if wished so
  • Wi-Fi or internet Data access
  • Family environment
  • Comfortable & safe stay option
  • Traditional dress workshop
  • Henna workshop
  • Air fare
  • Visa
  • Insurance
  • Local transportation (mostly on walking distance or support from coordinators)
  • SIM card
  • Personal expenses

For costs and further details please contact us on info@stepbeyondborders.org