As I had mentioned in previous entries, we have been joined in Kathmandu by one of our good friends, Janet. Janet has worked in journalism in Australia for many years and has been very eager to use her skills to help women journalists in Nepal. Journalism for women in Nepal is similar to many other professions in that it is much more difficult to be heard whether from a career prospective or simply just in the content of your work. The problems of access to education and family and social pressures also make journalism a challenging pursuit.
We invited a group of around 10 women who all shared a passion for making their voices heard to a round table discussion on the issues facing women in this industry. Janet, Rebecca and I met with the women in the ‘back room’ of a café in New Baneshwor and spent a lively 2 hours discussing the main issues they face, their hopes for the future and the areas in which they felt they needed the most help and support from us. Some of the recurring themes included their strong desire to hear about Janet’s experience of journalism in Australia and the prospects for women there. All of the women felt that this type of discussion was really inspiring and motivating for them. They were also keen to have an impromptu class on the basics of constructing a story and looking at some examples of the way news is reported across different publications in Australia. Janet came well prepared on this front and had even brought copies of some different newspapers from Australia to illustrate her points which the women enjoyed.
The tone of the class and the feedback afterwards was overwhelingly in favour of us working with Janet to setup a formal training course and in fact a number of the women enquired as to whether Janet would be available next week to start the training! This is testament to Janet’s demonstrated knowledge in this area as well as her presentation technique and we are immensely grateful to her for putting herself ‘out there’ and giving this a go. Of course now the real work for all of us begins as Janet is going to work on preparing a course that will give maximum benefit to the women whilst we will be working on the logistics of running the course probably some time in March next year.
Some unexpected benefits of the forum also came in the form of a number of the women meeting each other for the first time and vowing to keep in touch and perhaps even form an ongoing support group in order that they might work together on particular issues and projects. This would be a fantastic outcome as we always try to keep sustainability in mind when developing these projects – if these women can take their experience and training we provide and use them to promote their causes and help others to do the same, then who knows what the future might hold for Nepal?!
Stay tuned for updates as this project takes shape…
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