During the RBA one of the respondents from Sabgadha-6, gaur Municipality of Rautahat district shared that females have less mobility for economic activities outside the house. Further, he expressed that mainly male members of the family involved in economic activities while female were more involved in household activities which supports to their family members to go to work but female can’t money directly. Similarly, a Gender Based Violence is one of the major issues in ward no 6 of Gaur Municipality was found during the assessment that is also justified by the scenario most of the targeted beneficiaries had not a Nepali citizenship, though, it is very much essential in terms of getting driving license, taking a loan from the Bank, finance or cooperative for matching funds and operating a bank account for receiving seed money to start their small business and micro-enterprises. The main reason behind Muslim women are not having citizenship was people had the perception that after the divorce (TALAK) property should be distributed to women.
Image may contain: 5 peopleIn the same way Madarsa teacher also expressed his experience that most of the parents engaged their children in grass cutting, cattle herding and firewood collection etc. Therefore, he has perceived that send their children to school on regular basis in ensuring their education rights is the responsibility of the parent. Other side, parent realized that, it happened in the Muslim community due to the highly conservative thought like girls’ member of the family cannot be seen by outsider people (HAMARA PARIBAR KE LOG DEKHI). Similarly, ward representative expressed that Muslim children are limited to the Madarsa education as they mainly focus on the religious education. Due to that, a very much talented Muslim girl was restricted to sing a song at the stage.
Further, the attendance of the children was only 30-35% in the public school despite of the effort made by head teacher via sending letter to the parents. Keeping this scenario in mind, the project celebrated 109th International women’s day on 8 March in the coordination with Gaur Municipality ward no-6. First time in Nepal’s History only Muslim’s women celebrated Women’s Day through this program. The chief guest of the project was former Minister and Member of parliament Mr. Md Aftab Aalam. Around 1000 Muslim girls, young women, Moulbi of Madarsa and women actively participated in the celebration along with Member of provincial government, Mayor, Vice- Mayor, CDO, Superintendent of police, army, investigating and the other line agencies like health, education, women development officials, NGOs representative and journalists. One of the interesting thing was the girls who restricted to perform on the stage previously was performed her women rights related song in such a huge mass and she was rewarded as well. Other side, the celebration of the International Women Day was jointly monitored by the local government and district stakeholders including Media. They are surprised by seeing the huge participation of Muslim girls and women as well as their activities like speech, poem and song on Muslim rights. They appreciated this great effort of breaking the bond by Muslim women and girls via showing their participation in mass activities and suggested to scale this type of role model initiation to the other Muslim communities of the Rautahat district as well. Such event was also widely covered by the local newspaper and media. In addition, the women advocacy platform members brought the idea of organizing an informative picnic during the discussion session on the consequences of cultural restriction on mobility of the women through RELFECT. They expressed that this type of picnic will provided us the opportunity of freedom where we can enjoy our life, share our feelings and emotions among each other and learn from them and realize the situation of other Muslim women as well. Finally, in consultation religious leaders, Muslim community and coordination with local government, Mandwi decided and organized a picnic for them. It was the another successful empowering event for the Muslim community where they freely exercise their right to freedom by happily sharing their feeling and emotions, enjoyed with playing, singing and eating. In addition, learned how to get the citizenship, marriage certificate and birth registration of their child.
