While in Nepal, we were so lucky to witness the amazing work of our Creating Possibilities Nepal (CP Nepal) family. At the time of spring 2022, our sexual and reproductive health (SRH) program consisted of four groups, totally approximately 120 girls in Dang, Nepal. Even then, awareness of the program was spreading quickly, fuelled by the vibrant and distinct pink t-shirts! Each day, more and more girls were becoming interested in the program, leading to the development of new groups around the region. This program has really taken off since our visit to Nepal, and we wanted to share these exciting updates with you!
To start off, the four groups of students that we met in Nepal have now completed their very well-received 12-session program. Knowledge uptake and confidence development was incredibly high in these young girls, as we witnessed during our time in Nepal. Now, there are 12 new groups (350 students) who are currently completing a newly adapted 9-session program. Sessions have begun expanding to villages throughout the region and are now taking place in 3 municipalities: Rapti, Rajpur, and Gadhawa. Local schools and government officials within these three municipalities are supportive of the program and have become involved as well! They have joined some of the sessions to speak with the girls and voice their encouragement, as well as request for more groups to be created! We were ecstatic to hear this, as involvement from local government is a crucial step towards effecting systemic and long-lasting change.
We’ve kept in close contact with our CP Nepal family, and have established a current goal of 19 groups. You may be wondering how our wonderful educator Sita could possibly handle teaching this many students! This brings us to our next very exciting update… we now have two new educators, Gyanu Chaudhary and Chanchala Chaudhary! Gyanu, who is local to Gadhawa, is currently teaching the three groups operating in her municipality, and Chanchala, who is from Rapti, has taken on six groups in her area. We hope to meet with these two amazing instructors in the near future and share more about the incredible work that they are doing!
Our students are chanting the Adolescent Health Program slogan: change the time, change the behaviour, let's talk about reproductive health openly!
We also have some exciting updates to share from Canada as well! We have completed our Project Report, a document detailing all of the work that has been done over the past two years (which can be found on our website). In collaboration with Sita, we have also created printable educational resources for each of the nine sessions to guide learning of tricky concepts requiring the use of diagrams. Currently, we are updating the Adolescent Health Program lessons with content that Sita and the girls either find confusing or would like to learn more about (including STIs, vaginal health, and infertility)! Once these lesson plans are finalized, we hope to create a Training-of-Trainers manual, which will serve as a baseline for future educators as the program continues to expand, allowing for consistent and sustainable delivery. Stay tuned to see how the program and our project continue to evolve!
All of this progress would not be possible without the generous support of our donor, iA Financial. The incredible impact that the program has had in rural Nepal as well as its rapid growth were made possible through iA Financial’s significant contribution to our project, and we extend our utmost gratitude to them for their generosity.
