Monday, December 17, 2012

DEC Nepal a learning platform

It has been ages, I have not written a blog post so feeling bit uncertain with my flow of words and thoughts. I  am not sure what to write about organization like Development Exchange Centre Nepal. It is an organization so dear to me where I had learnt so many things and lessons of life. I am trying to unfold my old memories dating back to 2000 so almost 12 years from now.

Memories of PATH

At that time, I used to work for Participatory Approach Towards Holistic Development. It was program focused on promoting good governance through catalytic role of civil society organizations. I now realize that it is more of focusing both on internal accountability, making civil society more accountable towards its target communities.

We used to organize training programs for civil society on governance, at that time, it was relatively very new topic in development world of Nepal. May be now a days, where ever I go to field, I see these people who attended these training as resource persons of governance, democracy and advocacy. I feel very proud to be associated with this process of building so many resource persons and advocates of good governance promotion.

Working for peace promotion

We used to work as a regional chapter for SAP Nepal. It should also be the year of 2000 where we initiated peace building initiatives to address issues of peoples conflict. I remember the day, when I had to talk on relevance of peace in Makwanpur. I used to be a young lady advocating for peace process when conflict was at high end. I did not fear at that time, I did not think of my child whom I was breast feeding at that time. I was just stating my mind and urging people to end sequence of killing brothers and sisters.

When the program was over, I remember how hurriedly our partner organization arranged a vehicle to drive back to Sauraha. They told me it was not safe for me as I had spoken on "peace". It was the word at that time, people were afraid to state at that time. When I remember those days, it feels like a dream.

Lessons of life

This organization taught us the lesson that we should be passionate and bold on our destination where we want to reach. Being close to nature, we knew how to embrace these natural beauties, be it in the form of ethno botanic natural forest, small pond for fish (that we could not retain), water body for birds, home for pigeons. Without opportunity to work with this organization, I will never be what I am now, thank you DEC Nepal for being a learning basket for sharpening my professionalism.