Strength TogetHER 18 - Session 1


18 December 2021.

Strength togetHER facilitated by Lokopakar provides a safe platform for girls to share their personal stories, ideas, and feelings. We have been conducting our sessions physically at different schools. Now, we have started our physical session at Jyotidaya Cooperative Secondary School at Chapagaon.

Jyotidaya Cooperative School in Chapagaun, a community in the outskirt of Kathmandu Valley, is a model school that offers an alternative to expensive private schools and low-quality public schools. Run by a group of young people, the school is the only community cooperative school in Nepal. Jyotidaya School is developed as a model nonprofit, community school where tuition is at least 40% less than comparative private schools, and 1 in 7 children, mostly orphans and children from poor families, study for free.


We were really excited to see girls from Jyotidaya Cooperative Secondary School dressed in their sports dress. We could see 27 girls sitting in a semi-circle all shy and nervous behind the mask.


An introduction with a small voice behind the mask and shyness in their eyes these girls gave their introduction mentioning their favorite colors and their particular reasons.

“Black is my favorite color because it makes me comfortable, Yellow is my favorite because I love the sun, Green is my favorite because the surrounding around us makes me feel happy, I like purple not because I am a fan of BTS but it is just the color I like, I really don't like any colors, I like all the colors and I cannot choose any one of it” these were some of the replies our girls gave in their introduction.

Getting to know each other through our introduction girls slowly started opening up. With the introduction, we did our activity of comfort circle. We asked girls different questions like if they were able to share stories among the mass or if they are afraid to speak in front of the mass or fear of being judged or fear of being judged or trying out of the comfort zone”. With everyone in and out of the circle by the end of the circle, we promised we will TRY and give our best to improve ourselves.

We discussed the topic they would really love to have a discussion on. Some of the topics they were interested in were:

  • Periods

  • Family Problem

  • Story of Life

  • Self Confidence

  • Body Shaming and Appearance

  • Emotion and Dealing with Them

  • Judgments

  • Small Happiness

  • Gender stereotyping

  • Stress on Education

  • Comparison

  • Poverty

  • Nice Moments of life

  • Overthinking


With the sharing, we got more closer. From the beginning of the session to the end I asked them if they were 50 % comfortable with us. I could see all the hands being raised and went for 80% I could see only half of the hands being raised.

We promised we will TRY and make sure we will all be 80% comfortable in the next session. We decided our session to be on “My First Period Stories”.


For this session, I was joined by Dibya Uprety (Strength TogetHER). Dibya has been continuously working with us in physical sessions. She is an outgoing person with lots of energy and kindness within her. We were fortunate to know her through our online session for one year. The meet from online to offline has been memorable. Creating long-term bonds and relationships has always been the core of Strength TogetHER. We really look forward to having these special bonds with everyone from Jyotidaya Cooperative Secondary School.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Strength TogetHER 18 - Session 7

Image
  29th Jan 2022 "Stop overthinking, you are only creating problems that aren't there." Lokopakar is a youth-based organization running different projects all over Nepal. Strength Together is one of the programs where groups of girls come together to share their stories and inspire each other through their experiences and ideas. Strength TogetHER first started running its sessions online, then ran its projects in physical presence, and now is continuing its sessions online due to the rising covid cases all over the country. On 29th Jan, the girls of Jyotidaya school decided to continue their session online on the topic "Overthinking." In this session, they shared what makes them overthink. The session was moderated by the members of Lokopakar, Ms.Barsha Tamang and Ms.Anisha Prajapati. The first speaker shared that her overthinking panics her during her exams. In some cases, she has frozen while writing. But now she has learned a technique, she acknowledges that s
Read more

Strength TogetHER 18 - Session 2

Image
December 29,2021 With added excitement from the previous week, we started our session at Jyotidaya Cooperative Secondary School at Chapagaun. Our topic for the week was, “My First Period Story”. We had asked the participants to share their first-period stories so we could open up and talk about them more.  Our first participant started her story as: I was in grade 7 and we had an event (Sworsaradha puja) at our house. My mother was pregnant with my younger brother at that time, and it was quite a busy day. I realized that I had gotten my first period and rushed to tell my mother. She told me that I would not be allowed to be involved in the puja and I couldn’t touch or help around. One of my sisters had come over for the puja and helped me with putting the pad. I had some idea about it, but I couldn’t figure out the front and the back but my sister helped me with that. I was then shifted to the ground floor of our house where I stayed for 22 days, this was mainly because my grandmother
Read more

Strength TogetHER 18 - Session 6

Image
22nd January 2022. Lokopakar is a youth-based organization currently running four projects among which Strength togetHER is one of its projects where a group of girls from different backgrounds meet and share their stories, insecurities, ideas, and perspective and help each other grow. We invite moderators in multiple sessions who listen, appreciate, and guide the participants.  With the ongoing increase of COVID 19 infections, we decided to conduct online sessions for Jyotidaya Cooperative Secondary School on the topic, “Sharing my funny and sad moments”. Our moderator for the day was Ms. Dolma Lama, who is a teacher and media coordinator at Brihaspati Vidyasadan. She is also a secretary of the Sports and Environment Commission of the Nepal Olympic Committee.  Our first participant started by sharing her sad moment, which was when her aunt got married. Among all the aunties she has, she shared that aunty was her favorite, she had never seen her cry before. So, on her wedding day when
Read more