By Athena Rayburn | Project Leader
This year at Women LEAD has been like no other. We began the year recovering from the aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes, with progress further impeded by a five-month blockade and the ensuing fuel shortages. We rebuilt our office from the ground up after it suffered structural damage during the quakes and yet still we graduated 30 more young, strong, women LEADers from our program who have already gone on to train almost 400 youth across 15 middle schools and joined WLEAD as interns to help recruit and select the next cohort of LEADers. That’s why we are especially honored to announce that this year our efforts have been recognised with a prestigious With and For Girls Award!
The With and For Girls Awards is a global initiative to identify and support strong local organizations working with and for girls. “Women LEAD Nepal is spearheading such an innovative program about a theme that is usually not considered important in the conversations about girls,” says Deeksha who managed the girls-led panel that decided the Asia & Pacific Region award recipients. “Women LEAD fitted well with our criteria of a grassroots, girl-led, girl-focused organization.”
One of the features of Women LEAD that makes us a truly exceptional organization is how invested and involved our girls continue to be, even years after completing our program. Our LEAD course might only be one year, but our girls are LEADers for life. They continue to co-create our programs, serve on our board and support Women LEAD as guest speakers, mentors and allies. When hearing that Women LEAD won the award, 2012 LEADer Sujata said she felt it was ‘‘A moment to be proud.” While Aastha, a 2015 LEADer, shared that “The day I got to know that Women LEAD won the award I was so, so happy. I felt like my family together won it and that news made my day.”
Your support has not only led us to this monumental victory in our organization’s history but thanks to your contributions we are also over 90% of the way towards our project funding goal of $20,000!
Thank you for making 2016 truly a year to remember at Women LEAD, for being part of our family and for standing with us in our mission to ensure that women and girls in Nepal can lead alongside men.
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