So, here I am again at the end of my trip to Nepal. It's beautifully sunny today and getting warmer every day. Yesterday I was with the CWISH staff (in a VERY cold office!) reflecting on the research training, the pilot and planning the rest of the project.
It's been an absolute joy to work with the staff and researchers of CWISH. They are well organised, conscientious and thorough but most important of all they have integrity - bucketloads of it! I've learned a lot about 'partnership' while I've been here and the trust that is integral to any kind of relationship. And I believe that the trust I have for the key people I'm working with in CWISH - Milan and Writu - is based on an integrity that is behind everything they do. It is important to them and it is important to me that the focus and the aim of our work and, I suppose, our lives is clear - 'empowerment'. I hope that the research team, after this week of training, is now empowered to take on the responsibilities of this project. I certainly feel empowered by the whole process. But at the centre of it all is the empowerment of children and I witnessed this becoming evident during the course of the week - from the way people were thinking, from little things they said and particularly in the reflections we all made together. Inadvertently, on the last day of the training, I asked people to commit themselves to the project or face punishment after death!! I organised a 'reflection' where we all sat in a circle around some candles, in turn, we took a candle and said what we had taken or learned from the research and then placed it back saying what we would 'give' to the project. Milan told me afterwards that this ritual with candles was very common in Nepal but that people believed that when they made a commitment with a candle, they would be punished in the after-life if they broke their commitment! We had a good laugh about that of course!
Before I got distracted by the candle story I was leading up to saying that I think the empowerment element of the training was quite consciously present, I believe, because all the 'facilitators' are activists. I like to call myself an activist but feel ashamed to do so in the presence of a true revolutionary like Beth Protacio de Castro. Although Beth was officially representing the funding agency for this project, Oak Foundation (she is a professor of psychology) she was imprisoned by the Marcos regime in the Philippines in her youth! The other facilitator with me (also from the Philippines) Faye Balanon has a passion to her facilitation that is based on her social work background and activism and Milan is currently very involved in the activist movement of Nepal. This activist spirit, to use a military term, infiltrated the discussions - but not in an angry and political 'let's overthrow the government' kind of way. It felt much more caring and quiet; it was particularly present when we discussed the ethics of the research and everyone was nodding their heads and agreeing that we should 'do no harm' to the child participants.
So, I have to write my reports for today, I fly back tomorrow but will be back in Nepal in September. I'm looking forward to it, I'm very excited about this research - it's going to change the world!!!
It's been an absolute joy to work with the staff and researchers of CWISH. They are well organised, conscientious and thorough but most important of all they have integrity - bucketloads of it! I've learned a lot about 'partnership' while I've been here and the trust that is integral to any kind of relationship. And I believe that the trust I have for the key people I'm working with in CWISH - Milan and Writu - is based on an integrity that is behind everything they do. It is important to them and it is important to me that the focus and the aim of our work and, I suppose, our lives is clear - 'empowerment'. I hope that the research team, after this week of training, is now empowered to take on the responsibilities of this project. I certainly feel empowered by the whole process. But at the centre of it all is the empowerment of children and I witnessed this becoming evident during the course of the week - from the way people were thinking, from little things they said and particularly in the reflections we all made together. Inadvertently, on the last day of the training, I asked people to commit themselves to the project or face punishment after death!! I organised a 'reflection' where we all sat in a circle around some candles, in turn, we took a candle and said what we had taken or learned from the research and then placed it back saying what we would 'give' to the project. Milan told me afterwards that this ritual with candles was very common in Nepal but that people believed that when they made a commitment with a candle, they would be punished in the after-life if they broke their commitment! We had a good laugh about that of course!
Before I got distracted by the candle story I was leading up to saying that I think the empowerment element of the training was quite consciously present, I believe, because all the 'facilitators' are activists. I like to call myself an activist but feel ashamed to do so in the presence of a true revolutionary like Beth Protacio de Castro. Although Beth was officially representing the funding agency for this project, Oak Foundation (she is a professor of psychology) she was imprisoned by the Marcos regime in the Philippines in her youth! The other facilitator with me (also from the Philippines) Faye Balanon has a passion to her facilitation that is based on her social work background and activism and Milan is currently very involved in the activist movement of Nepal. This activist spirit, to use a military term, infiltrated the discussions - but not in an angry and political 'let's overthrow the government' kind of way. It felt much more caring and quiet; it was particularly present when we discussed the ethics of the research and everyone was nodding their heads and agreeing that we should 'do no harm' to the child participants.
So, I have to write my reports for today, I fly back tomorrow but will be back in Nepal in September. I'm looking forward to it, I'm very excited about this research - it's going to change the world!!!
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