September 2023
I have been fortunate to attend several meetings of the WAWCAS program. As a result, I was delighted to become a member. Once I finished my household duties, I arrived at the designated meeting-spot alongside the other women. Sima, our trainer, arrived shortly after and warmly greeted us before commencing the meeting. She briefly went over the previous meeting before emphasizing that the purpose of today’s gathering was to analyze the current social situation. During a social analysis, a question was asked which stimulated diverse responses from the group. Some participants thought the question referred to the situation of the goat, buffalo, and chicken, while others interpreted it as pertaining to the status of Nepali-speaking individuals or the condition of our crops. The resulting exchange was lively and enjoyable.
She proceeded to elaborate on the genuine importance of the Social Situational Analysis. It tackles the challenges we confront concerning discrimination, based on gender, caste, and socio-economic status, encompassing mental, social, economic, and physical maltreatment targeting women and children. Additionally, it encompasses the diverse predicaments we encounter in our locality, reaching from sanitation to resource management.
Our trainer divided us into five groups and gave us open-ended questions to conduct a Social Situational Analysis on various topics pertaining preventive healthcare and sanitation, child rights and development, women’s rights and violence, resource mobilization, and market analysis. Moreover, she urged us to bear in mind actual situations, such as whether we have registered our children’s birth registration and marriage registration. She also reflected on whether our children and spouses assist with household chores. She also gave more example questions such as who buys necessary things in your house? How far is the market from your home? When I heard all these, I was confused.
I just thought I am doing well on my own and I replied likewise. After the Social Situational Analysis was completed, the next important thing, called Indicator Development was started. I was quite amazed to see the status of the group. There were many women who married really soon so they have no citizenship and the people whose home were far away and had not still made it. The indicator was made in very effective way. The time bound was made according to the circumstances of the group.
I am really pleased I got to know a new thing today. Not only that we are behind but also, we need to bring a lot of changes in our behavior so that we can be empowered. I learnt the importance of the marriage and childbirth registration from this process.
Sima reminded us of the issue we have discussed during the indicators, we have developed. At that time, she divided the groups and we disused what we learned and shared so many things with each other.
I always used to go for working in other people’s home, so I haven’t had enough time for my own home cleaning. From now on, I have decided to clean regularly. When we are suffering from menstruation period, we feel ashamed to dry clothes in front of others in direct sun.
More important part is about nutrition. In our village we can find pesticide -free green vegetable which gives us more vitamin and energy in our body, but we don’t know any things about nutrition so green vegetable have been wasted. Sima promised us that we would get to know all about issued based training in monthly meeting.
We also learned about and discussed the social, mental, physical and economics violence towards men, children, and women. Many women faced such type of violence. The main reason of the violence is that men drink a lot of alcohol which create physical economical and mental violence against the women. We discussed each problem in the group. In the beginning, we felt awkward to share our problem towards the group. But Sima created a friendly environment so we easily could share our problems in the group.
After the discussion, I found many issues in our life. I promised myself that from now on, I will leave my shyness and hesitation and rise my voices.