A safe, bright and happy place for thousands of young women from all over Nepal to take refuge, seek counselling and access medical care.
A centre that teaches female rights, self defence, menstrual education and sanitation, family planning, career advice and much, much, more.
Over the last 5 years we have been running a Girls’ Empowerment Program in rural Nepal. It has been a great success; 5 years ago these deeply suppressed and often abused young women would barely speak to a man and certainly not in public.
Many of the girls were forced to spend their monthly period in a shed with animals and no human contact, a terrifying experience especially when partnered with zero menstrual health information or education.
Fast forward to today and they are speaking on national TV and Radio about girls rights, taking on politicians, winning international awards and are true pillars in their communities.
We have countless wonderful stories of the difference this program has made to so many girls lives and the communities in which they live.
The attitude of the men in the region has completely changed, with fathers now fully behind the education of girls and their career choices.
Without this program it’s highly likely many of these girls would be married off at as young as 12.
We have reached well over 23,000 rural girls with the program and we are now entering year 4 where we are taking the program nationwide.
We receive requests weekly from girls in Nepal who want to join the program and schools eager for our teams to go and speak to their students.
We have received a great deal of media attention and our work and progress is discussed on a weekly national TV show.
We have changed the way young women can access police help and have ensured safe channels for the girls to use should they be threatened or forced into marriage.
It is a very far reaching program and we couldn’t be happier with the results or more proud of the girls.
All this has culminated in the need for a Girls’ Empowerment Centre. Currently we run sessions and programs in rented rooms and outside spaces. In order to offer this program to a much wider audience, we need a building that will act as a beacon of hope and safety for these young women.
With visiting speakers and educators, and resource libraries for the girls along with outside space for martial arts and other exercise and meditation, this centre will provide space for the girls to recover, learn and play.
We were fortunate enough to be chosen by an international architects competition for this project. Thirty architects submitted design plans; the local team, the girls and a judging panel of architects chose the winner. It serves our purposes perfectly and would be an incredible boost to thousands of young women for many years to come.
FURTHER INFO:
We broke ground this in March 2022. We are working with our usual team with whom we have completed all of our projects on time and within budget.
Total budget is 450,000GBP of which we still require 150,000GBP
