On 7 August 2021, SAP-Nepal organized Province Level Policy and Practice interaction with local, district and provincial key stakeholders about the different facets of the project, to create favorable environment for engaging the key stakeholder in the program and thereby ensuring their collaboration for the common cause of gender responsive governance. There were all together 39 participants including Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Chief Executive Officers, ward chair, ward member (Barathawa, Haripur, Chandranagar, Basbariya), chair of NGOs federation, media person and CSOs representatives of Sarlahi district. The event was organized under the project ‘Strengthening Gender Responsive Local Government in Nepal’ supported by UNDEF. Mr. Mahendra Mahato, Chairman of Chandranagar Rural Municipality was the chief guest of the event.
The project coordinator, Mr. Janak karki, highlighted on the aim of the project to empower Musahar women and strengthen their representation in local decision-making procedures for promoting gender-responsive local governance in two rural municipalities (Basbariya and Chandranagar), and two town municipalities (Barhathwa and Haripur) of Sarlahi district. He informed the local stakeholders that the project envisions to capacitate 30 Mushar women as mobile trainers who would further empower 1500 other Musahar women of the community. The project also envisions to increase awareness of 100 locally elected representatives, 240 service providers about the social accountability process, and enhancing accountability of the local stakeholders towards the marginalized Musahar population and their development in close collaborative effort of CSOs, media and government, added Janak Karki.
During the discussion, Sudha Kafle, Assistant Women’s Development Officer of Haripur Municipality, agreed that Musahar women are confined to their homes and are not affiliated with any social groups of community and hence such program would be very effective for their empowerment. Similarly, Ram Ganesh Mahato, representative of Chandranagar Municipality Agriculture Branch, said that Musahar women do not have access to the various government grants because they are not affiliated with any network /groups hence appreciated the initiation of SAP Nepal in initiating the formation of Mushar women network. Ripuraj Rishi Musahar, president of the Nepal Musahar Association, asserted that local government are not interested in the issues of the Musahar community but in politics and that budget has not been allocated targeting this backward community. Hence, he along with other local stakeholders expressed their interest in supporting this project in the days to come.
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