Two days of each week of training are spent all together learning about human rights, health, the law, advocacy and a range of other things. Then, on Tuesday, we break up into four groups for the specific income generation learning. And recently, chilies have dominated.
In the kitchen the ladies have learnt to make achar (pickles) under the watchful eye of Anju didi, our pickle queen. Pickles are now made, bottled and labelled and this week is sales and marketing training where Anju will take the ladies to learn tha art of door to door sales. Next week they get stuck into dhoop (incense) so the smells emanating from that room will be different.
Here is Anju, our achar didi and some of the products.
In the front room, the polymer clay ladies have also been surrounded by chilies! We are making chilies to learn how to do a Skinner blend and also because we will be sending a range of Chili Jewellery to ACP to see if they want to buy some.
If the reaction from the ladies here is anything to go by, we are onto a winner. We are in the middle of making chili earrings for each participant so they will be perfect for general consumption. So to speak.
Here is Pramila bashing her Skinner blend-with love-and creating the Chili Choker!
The tailoring ladies are already making children’s clothes and made their first sale last week! And we make sure we tell the computer training ladies just how much fun we are having!
Our photo shows Rupa looking happy with herself as she learns how to make babies’ clothes which are in high demand here.
The photo of this letter was meant to accompany a thank you entry quite some time ago but a technical hitch (can you call a brain malfunction a technical hitch?) meant it didn’t get sent to our wonderful website queen in Ohio.
So, here is a photo of the very heartfelt letter from our board to thank some of the people they wanted to acknowledge more formally. (Click on the letter to see it full-sized.)
Two of the people mentioned are Australians who live here in Nepal and who feel enormously fortunate to have anything to do with Samunnat. Thanks enough in being able to be involved. Two are some of the many wonderful behind-the- scenes people who keep things running smoothly and manage our Friends of Sammunat account in Australia. Two made very generous donations in the early stages; and Cynthia is the designer, originator and ongoing maintainer of our gorgeous website.
To these and all the people who continue to support us in every way, we are deeply grateful. As always, we hope the blog can impart a small part of the sense of energy and excitement we feel when we see the transformation that is happening for women here.
Dhanyabad
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| Small group goal setting discussions. We did have chairs set up but they were abandoned early on. |
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| Two participants display their lemon pickles |
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| Punctual participants with our banner |
We had been talking and thinking about the training for such a long time. Now the day had arrived. Today was the first day and I was so excited about our training but wondered whether we could reach there on time. [Editors note: a valid concern. She does try to squeeze a lot into the morning!]
Unfortunately, as usual, I was late. [Ed: Not by some local standards]
When we started, we organised the time and began the program in an informal way. Gopal welcomed the ladies and Wendy didi lit the candle and we all introduced ourselves. Then we had a meditation training. I had never felt so excited working in the office before. Even though some ladies were from far away, they all came punctually as promised. It gave me the energy to work more. [Ed's note: This is a somewhat daunting thought! Kopila works amazingly hard] I really don’t feel tired.
Our first week was very emotional and the ladies were very thoughtful. Each lady had excitement on her face. An interesting thing was when we had the “Ice Breaking” session and they laughed and enjoyed the activities. I felt that, for the first time in a long time, they had the chance to open up and see a light of hope. In the break time they all wanted to exchange their feelings with one another.
During all the planning and preparation still I felt I was juggling so many things and I wondered if it would all happen. So now, first week is finished. I feel more relaxed about the rest of the training!
Kopila
The month has been a busy one-even without the diversions of New Year. For most people here it is mid 2066 and very cold. We all looked a bit like the Michelin man at our board meeting with our many layers of clothing.
We have done lots of work as the final arrangements for the training program come together.
A few days ago, Kopila and I ran the Goal Setting component of the training for most of the board members. They politely asked to hear it all. We did in one day what will take much longer in reality. They were a wonderful trial audience and were very encouraging.
With so many women interested in the program, the job of the board becomes identifying the women from our target population who will most benefit from this round of training. We are getting a strong message that we will need to repeat this course.
We are excited by the commitment and energy of our trainers. They share our passion for training that has real measurable outcomes and working with them has been wonderfully inspiring. Debita, our cutting and tailoring trainer is pictured here.
We continue to be encouraged by the generosity of people who want to help and particularly want to thank the following contributors for their very generous recent donations:
- Rhonda and Geoff Coleman
- Bev and John McLaren
- Bert and Leslie Washington
Blog entries may be “pithier” than usual for the next month or so (which some of you may consider a blessing) as we will be somewhat distracted and busy. Bear with us and we will try and keep you up to date with photos at least.
The other wonderful thing that has happened in past weeks is that we have been able to move to a MUCH better office. Thanks to donations, we can now afford something much more suitable and the transformation is profound.
From a one room dustbowl with poor light, a cacophonous soundtrack, no privacy and highway frontage, we now have four rooms in the ground floor of a home less than ten minutes walk from the highway but light years away in terms of sound and dust.
There is one room with good natural lighting where we do the beading and claying; one room for training and meeting and where we will hold the bulk of our New Start program; one room that serves as an office and interview room for the new ladies who come to ask for help and one room which will be for storage.
For the first time, we have funds to actually BUY some furniture so have got some second hand tables and chairs that are so much more comfortable. We also plan to have some storage which will be a vast improvement on the “bags of bags” system we have primarily used to date! It is “ekdam shanti”-very peaceful.
You can see the exterior in the these photos and get a glimpse of some of us at work. The ladies in this photo came in especially on a Saturday to work on an order we had from the Association of Craft Producers (ACP). We are very happy with the new place and had the first board meeting there a week ago. We’d welcome visitors.
Well, we have been dropping enough hints and now we can spill the beans!
The Australian Embassy, representing the Australian Government in Nepal, have a grant program called the Direct Aid Program which provides small one-off grants to specific programs all over the world.
Some months ago, in very close consultation with the ladies we work with, we developed a longer version of the program we called the “New Start Program” which we hope to run at least twice next year and have mentioned in earlier blog entries.
We submitted the plans and lots of other documentation to see if it fitted the Embassy guidelines for funding. It did but we were told that the funding was very competitive and that we’d have to wait to see which programs, out of many submitted, could be funded. To our absolute delight we were told that we’d been accepted. Kopila went to Kathmandu last Thursday to sign contracts and receive the initial cheque.
We plan to start the program early next year and are now “talking turkey” with our prospective trainers and applicants! We planned to run a very pared down version of this whether we got the funding or not, thanks to donations received already. Now we can include many more components that the women identified as important and can include some more expensive training options (such as Introduction to Computers, Mobile Phone repair) with real prospects for income generation.
There is a very big emphasis on practical training in goal setting and planning and each woman will set individualised weekly goals and practise evaluating them with a mentor. This will be in readiness for setting a personal six-month goal at the end of the course that will be regularly monitored so they can determine:
- What’s working?
- What’s not?
- What needs to be done differently?
A remarkable American called Mark Ylvisaker, with his colleague Tim Feeney, used these questions in helping a very different population to establish meaningful life goals. He tragically died this year and his influence truly continues in activities like this. Vale Mark.
Ongoing evaluation and tangible, measurable outcomes were a big requirement in the proposal. Part of this will be the production of a DVD covering the journey of some of the women through the training.
We are very excited about this and as always, want to say a massive thank you to all our supporters and readers for their ongoing practical and emotional support! We will keep you posted via the blog as to how it is all going. Now the tricky task of time-tabling lies ahead.
Where will the program be held we hear you ask? Wait until next blog’s exciting instalment!
