Our personal Cheer Squads

With the World Cup final around the corner and Nepal transfixed, we decided it was a good opportunity to talk to the girls in our network about the huge power of our own personal Cheer Squads - those we can turn to when life throws us challenges.

During our monthly meeting with our girls from Bhaktapur, Panauti and Sanga, spent some time talking about the very high rate of suicides amongst young people, especially girls, in Nepal at the moment. This week alone we heard of a girl committing suicide over a fight with her boyfriend, another because she didn't get into the college she had been trying for (as her SLC result was 79.5% and not a distinction of 80%) and another because Brazil lost in the semi-finals of the World Cup.

 

There is a pervading feeling of hopelessness amongst many teenage girls here at the moment and we wanted to remind our girls that they have a HUGE network of people who believe in them. They each drew their own Cheer Squad Maps, to stick up at home and remind them that they have people they can talk to when life gets challenging, or simply when they have a bad day. We then role-played how to give advice to an upset friend.

We challenged each of them to ask 3 people tomorrow - Are you OK? Sometimes, that's all it takes to give someone hope or the courage to reach out.

 

Mitrataa is all about friendship and the power of networks. If all of the girls in our networks reach out to 3 people, we can try to turn the helplessness into a circle of support.

 

Thank you to the girls for their participation! Keep dreaming and don't forget to believe in yourselves!