Samunnat Nepal looks ahead

The board of Samunnat Nepal decided to meet, once again, to take stock and plan for the future. This is a good time for planning for several reasons: women are coming for assistance in ever-increasing numbers; the community has opened up again after COVID; and income from product sales is picking up strongly after the challenging COVID downturn.  

Seven Board members met to discuss a series of questions about Samunnat’s work:

·       What is working well?

·       What could we do better?

·       What new programs could we offer to meet local needs?

·       How can we work better with local partners?

·       Do we need to update our mission statement and values?

Some of the Samunnat Inc. members in Australia helped facilitate by Zoom, with me, Kopila, chairing the meeting.

A gathering of (most of ) the Samunnat Nepal Board in 2020

We felt very positive in the meeting. The group identified that the polymer jewellery work is going very well, both for the women in the program and as a great source of income. Women from the sewing program are now working independently and running training for others. Samunnat has been able to provide financial support for women needing help with medical and educational expenses. These needs increased a lot during the pandemic.

Legal assistance is also going well, although very demanding. The increasing demand for assistance partly reflects that more women know their rights and have more confidence to seek help. Despite this, there is a need for greater awareness among women about their legal rights and the legal and court procedures. Women often seek help late or get a bit lost in legal procedures. So, Samunnat needs to run education and awareness programs in the community so that these problems are less. It will also look at ways to increase its capacity to provide legal help, currently very reliant on Kopila.

We see a lot of needs and possibilities for new programs but have really tried to focus according to our mission statement. We are keen to do community education about gender equality issues, abuse and the law, rights of self-defence, and property rights – this is a huge, ongoing need. There are several new areas for income generation training. As Gita (Board member and polymer artist) said, we need to focus on what works, what will give jobs. So, we think automobile repair and maintenance, carpentry, welding, house painting and agriculture. Many women don’t have good knowledge of seasonal planting and soil productivity, these are very important. We will emphasise train-the-trainer models but will explore what training options are locally available and affordable. We will also look at seed-funding/loans for women to start their businesses. We have dropped beauty parlour training as it is more expensive and less likely to lead to employment.

Women planting in a paddy not far from the Samunnat office

Many of our women have children. We want to increase our support for education expenses and give more support for the younger children. We hope to lease the vacant land in front of our buildings to make a play area. This will also bring others in the community to know Samunnat and the services it can give. There would be expenses to provide fencing and play equipment.

We have increasingly good relationships with the government Chief District Officer (CDO) and other local government bodies as well as (importantly) the police. We will build our relationship with the local Mechi Zonal hospital. More women are needing medical support, particularly those who come to us pregnant.

Our budget will be stretched if we can bring on all these initiatives but we will go ahead with the plans. We are looking to diversify our funding. The local government is interested in sharing the cost in several of these areas: the CDO is getting to know our work and is supportive. In particular, he would like to increase the availability of psycho-social counselling by holding training in the district. Currently, the only trained counsellor is Samunnat’s Neha Karki who was trained with funding from our Australian partner organisation Project Didi.

Lastly, I want to thank our supporters and everyone who has bought our products. We make them with love and we love hearing from you.

Kopila Basnet

Malcolm Moore