|
Postcard from Nepal   
Kate Mangino, CEDPA capacity building technical advisor, shares her experience from Nepal during the Advancing Women’s Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action Asia Regional workshop. The capacity building team, with the help of CEDPA's local office, has spent the last month in Nepal organizing and facilitating this three-week workshop. It is part of an initiative to equip and empower a cadre of women from around the world with the knowledge and skills to strengthen and lead the global response to AIDS. Greetings from Kathmandu! Being my first time in Nepal, this last month has been quite an adventure. We arrived on March 7 to organize and prepare for the Advancing Women’s Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action Asia regional workshop. On arriving, I was excited to meet the CEDPA Nepal team and looked forward to meeting the participants who we have been in contact with for months. I was welcomed with the warmth of the people of Nepal, and immediately fell in love with the local cuisine. When I leave, I will both miss the friends I have made and the delicious paneer dishes! The workshop participants began arriving on Sunday, March 15. The group is made up of 24 women from eight Asian countries with a broad range of backgrounds and expertise in areas including prevention for migrant workers, sex workers and intravenous drug users; care and treatment for people living with HIV; and advocacy for policy change at the local and national levels. All of them were enthusiastic about taking part in this three-week workshop that provides them with the necessary skills to continue their work in HIV programming and advocacy. The workshop covers technical areas as well as core management areas. These women were eager to swap best practices, and share challenges and successes from their home countries.
The next night a reception was held in honor of the participants to highlight the importance of programs and support in the areas of gender and HIV. At the CEDPA-hosted reception, Dale Davis, CEDPA/Nepal country director, welcomed guests to the event and introduced the speakers including CEDPA president and CEO, Carol Peasley; Anne Peniston, director of the Office of Health and Family Planning at USAID; Dr. Dirgh Singh Bam, Secretary Ministry of Health and Population; and Marites Reyes, a participant from the Philippines. All speakers testified to the need for further funding and work in gender and HIV. We are now two weeks into the workshop and the participants have completed sessions on HIV technical areas; gender; stigma; sexual and reproductive rights; advocacy; and strategic communication. The third and final week of the workshop will cover project and financial management as well as fundraising and proposal writing. Though it is always sad to say goodbye to the participants, everyone is looking forward to graduation on Friday, April 3. Once they receive their certificates, the participants will return to their homes and communities to apply the many lessons learned during the workshop, and we will return home to Washington, DC to prepare for the next workshop. Funded by the Ford Foundation, the Advancing Women’s Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action initiative brings together leading global agencies including CEDPA and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW), National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) and UNAIDS-led Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. |
|
Thanks to CEDPA’s local office in Nepal, which has been an invaluable resource, we were able to take the participants on a field trip to visit four local NGOs on March 24. This visit gave them the opportunity to observe local programs and learn from their colleagues in Kathmandu. 
