Feminist leadership advancing collectivism & addressing harmful norms and practices
Participants with Guest Speaker “Uma Devi Badi” Leader of Badi movement/Provincial Assembly Member
The three days Feminist Leadership Training from 27th to 29th August 2024 was organized in Hotel Devotee, Dhangadi Kailali under “Hamro Sahakarya Project” with an objective to enhance knowledge and understandings of community/Self-Help Groups leaders on feminist values, principles and feminism in everyday life, motivates participants to reflect on their roles and responsibilities and empower them to take action against inequalities and harmful practices and led social momentum at community level (facilitate community action plan).
The training was facilitated by Human Rights and Feminist Expert Advocate Indu Tuladhar and core project team members (Ms. Anita Bhujel and Ms. Muna Adhikari from JuRI Nepal) in a participatory approach focusing on reflective sessions, group exercises, games, discussion and also presentations. In the training live leadership experiences were shared by Provincial Assembly Member/Badi Movement Leader, Uma Devi Badi and Deputy Mayor of Dhangadi Metropolitian, Kandakala Kumari Rana. This sharing help participants to understand the leadership qualities, skills, strategic decision/technique they made to address the challenges they faced in their leadership journey. The sharing also motivates participants to shape their leadership journey.
The training enhanced knowledge and understanding of 15 community leaders (Dalit: 12, Janajti:1 and BCT:2) from the project locations. The pre and posttest further capture the change in knowledge and understanding of training participants; 71% of participants gained good understanding on feminist values and principles, 50% of participants enhance their understanding on power, patriarchy and feminist leadership style and 71% of participants strengthened their knowledge on feminist approaches and tools for advocacy.
Participants with their group exercises on Power wheel
Some self-reflections of the participants during exercise
Key Learnings from the training;
- Feminist values and principles adorn the leadership qualities that strengthen the inner commitment.
- Everyone has to reflect on their own experiences and action they are doing to get on same boat.
- Self-care is very important to all leaders that gives us awareness of our body.
- Participants still seems to avoid discussion on sexuality, many of them said this was first time in life they encounter question on intercourse and share their feelings. Through this reflection participants were able to analyze the depth of statement “My body my rights”. Participants also realized that how the sexuality of women/wife/daughters are controlled by patriarchy.
Facilitator’s reflection on the participants group exercise
The project will be creating an online sharing platform with these leaders to ensure their engagement with SHGs on facilitating feminist agendas and addressing harmful norms and practices through community action plans (CAPs) and motivating each other for collective movement.
Media coverage of the event: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/3WWkgE83cBhj4sNN/?mibextid=iCjFHx