New Project starting in April - need cameras!

During our last trip to Kathmandu in November we were joined for a week by our friend and amateur photographer, Linda Jocelyn. We had been discussing with Linda for some time the idea of running a program to teach photography to some of the teenage girls we support, the idea being that the program would give the girls a useful skill as well as teaching them about creativity, self-expression and interpretation of the environment around them.

In November Linda spent some time familiarising herself with Nepal and its quirks as well as meeting some of the girls from the orphanage at Bal Mandir. It is from here that we will be selecting around 10 girls to take part in the project which will be run over the next 2 years. You can read more about the project at our website.

Linda has committed to 3 to 4 trips to Nepal in the next 2 years, the first coming in April this year and as a result, Project Snow Leopard has been born! In April Linda will be meeting the girls and the first workshops on photography basics will take place. This first stage of the program will be run over 5 days and will include some field trips for the girls to have a chance to explore some of the more popular destinations in their country.

Having done photo essay exchanges before with kids from the Model School and schools in Australia, I am really looking forward to seeing what the girls come up with as a child's view on things is often quite different to ours. We will be asking the girls to keep a journal of their work including explanations and background to why they took certain shots. It promises to be an exciting journey for everyone involved!

By the end of the project we aim to have collected sufficient photos to compile a coffee table book which will be a wonderful memento of the project for the girls and will be a useful fundraising tool for Mitrataa.

How YOU Can Help...

In the lead up to the project we need to collect 12 'point and click' digital cameras for the girls to use. If anyone has an old digital camera they could spare please get in touch. Of course as always, financial contributions will also help with purchasing memory cards, batteries, notebooks etc.

To set the scene for the project we will be holding a photo exhibition in Sydney in mid-April. Linda will be showing a range of shots from her first trip to Kathmandu, providing a wonderful insight into the people and daily life of Nepal. Larger prints will be available to purchase through a silent auction and we will also be providing smaller and postcard-size prints to purchase too, with all funds going to this and Mitrataa's other work in Nepal. Stay tuned for updates on when/where this will happen...

Our sincere thanks goes to Linda for the dedication and commitment she has shown to this fantastic new initiative!

Our first Summit!

Yesterday Bec and I had the great privilege of hosting the inaugural Mitrataa Summit in Kathmandu. The event was a full day mix of team building activities, workshops and brainstorming sessions attended by 13 representatives from our various partner organisations and projects.

The day started with each participant being given a chocolate – either Freddo, Caramello, or Strawberry Freddo (thanks Cadbury!). Depending on their choice they had to either share something about which they were passionate, someone they admire and why, or 3 things for which they were grateful. As this was the first time many of the attendees were meeting each other, this activity was a great ice-breaker as well as setting a positive tone for the day.

It was then time for the serious work of the day with Bec taking the group through an interactive workshop on project management and in particular, preparing project proposals. Some of our partners obviously already had some experience in this field whilst for others it was the first time they had been exposed to these concepts. Each person had to progress through the workshop by preparing their own ‘make believe’ proposal and it was interesting to see some of the wonderful and unusual projects people were creating! We had projects covering everything from organic tea farming to micro-hydro-power schemes to after-school support for students struggling with Maths and English.

There was a quick break for a delicious dahl bhat lunch in the middle before we continued into the early afternoon completing the proposals. By the end of the session each participant had created a complete draft proposal for their dream project. Many of them had even included a proposed budget and timeline!

Next we turned our minds to a quick brain-storming session on some of the challenges being faced in relation to collection of report cards from schools hosting our Dream Catchers Scholarship girls. This was a great opportunity for partners from different parts of Kathmandu and its surrounds to share their ideas on how best to manage the program. It was really rewarding for us to observe new networks of support being formed amongst like-minded individuals.

The next session was another brain-storming around sourcing suitable candidates for the Defying Gravity program – a new initiative to provide scholarships and support for extraordinary women to realise their dream business. It was agreed that as a concept this was quite new in Nepal and so the first step would be to host a number of workshops on dreaming, ambitions and passion. Each of our partner organizations will be sourcing women they see as potentially being suitable for the program and we expect by the end of the workshops to have determined the first recipients of the scholarships!

After a quick afternoon tea break it was time for the final session of the day which was a group discussion regarding options for our Dream Catchers scholarship girls once they have completed school. We have one such girl this year with 5 more currently in their last year of school now so it is an issue we need to be prepared for. There was an amazing amount of suggestions on what we could do and by the end of the discussion we had a long list of action points and plans to put in place. Suffice to say, the girls will not be forgotten and we will be creating opportunities and ways to support them for as long as they need it!

As the summit drew to a close it was so inspiring and encouraging to see all of the people we work with in Nepal working together to create solutions and plans for our future work. The day was a real affirmation of the individuals and organisations we work with and we both felt so proud of all we as a team have achieved in the last few years.

Women Journalists' Workshop

Last weekend saw the inaugural Workshop for Women Journalists which we ran in conjunction with WWJ (Working Women Journalists). Janet O’Connor, sub-editor with the Financial Review in Australia, traveled to Kathmandu to conduct the training which was attended by 18 women from various media backgrounds. The course ran over 2 half days, covering topics such as basic story construction, editing, investigative reporting and freelancing.


The passion and enthusiasm shown by the attendees was infectious, especially as Janet had them turning nursery rhymes into hard news stories and other adventurous activities! It was surprising to see that despite in many cases significant education and experience and being able to recite the theory, the women found it challenging to apply some of the principles being taught. This is a problem reflective of the education system in Nepal, where the method of teaching does not place any focus on comprehension or application but rather only on memorising facts.

The position of women in journalism is indicative of the wider situation for women in Nepal in that they are not given the same opportunities and pay as men and often struggle to be recognized as experienced, credible journalists. The women journalists we have spoken with tend to want to report on issues close to them such as children and social matters and these are things that desperately need wider coverage to raise awareness in Nepal. We will be continuing to work with WWJ to develop more expansive programs to help up skill these wonderful, inspiring women so they can help increase awareness of the issues facing women in Nepal.

Thank you so much to Janet for stepping outside her comfort zone and running this program. It was a great success and we hope to be able to continue to run more of these types of programs with her in the future.


We must give a big ‘thank you’ to Equal Access here as well. They are an NGO (non-government organisation) working in Nepal, as well as other countries, to provide greater access to information and education through community based radio programs. Equal Access provided the use of their conference room and in-house catering facilities for the 2 day course and this was a fantastic help.

Bec's IP Awareness Training

This is a posting of work from our trip in October last year.

As many of you know, intellectual property law is one of my passions. So I was really excited to be able to marry my IP experience with my passion for Nepal to run a workshop in conjunction with the Nepal Trade & Export Promotion Centre. The NTEPC offers support to Nepali businesses which want to export their products overseas and they were keen to raise awareness of intellectual property issues amongst Nepali exporters. We ran an afternoon session for the co-operatives and associations as representatives of a broad range of industries initially. The afternoon consisted of 3 sections:

1. An introduction to NTEPC’s services, presented by Mani Lal Shrestha, Deputy Executive Director of NTEPC.
2. Intellectual Property and Its Benefits – An introduction for Nepali businesses, presented by me; and
3. Registration of industrial IP in Nepal, presented by Jiwan Prakash Sitaula, IP Director, Department of Industries.


My session had 2 main elements:

1. To explore the potential benefits of branding and IP for Nepali businesses;
2. To help Nepali companies avoid infringing other parties’ IP when they export their products overseas.

After the presentations, there was a very lively discussion of the role of government in supporting Nepali businesses in developing their IP and a round of questions about traditional knowledge and how it can be protected as this is a core competitive advantage Nepal has.

The afternoon raised a lot of interesting questions for me about the purpose of IP and its relevance to developing countries – is it a tool which is really only relevant to developed economies or could a country like Nepal have valuable IP which it could use in its battle to develop its economy?

As a result of this afternoon, I have been consulting pro bono to the Nepal Pashmina Industry Association as to how they can protect the pashmina name and brand.

We are now in discussions with the NTPEC and WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation which has been working with Nepal to help automate its IP systems, about running another series of workshops for different industries as well as preparing some training materials for the Department of Industries to use in its awareness raising activities.

We hope to continue to help Nepal protect its traditional knowledge and other valuable IP in future.

Bec

Women Journalists' Forum

It feels like a long time since my last blog but that is partly due to our being so busy here in Kathmandu! So, to bring you all up to speed, let me start with Monday this week.

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…