"She Leads Program" developed leadership capacity of women"

Municipality ward no.2, Rampur, Mushari, Bara. Before elected, she encountered so many hurdles. Being a Madhesi girl, it was too difficult to enter in politics. According to her women had to face so many rumors like intimacy with male counterpart and even she was not stay untouched with that in the beginning. But her father, Mr. Ramnath Mahato supported her a lot since he was already engaged with the Nepali Congress political party. He used to take her to the political meetings and gatherings, seminar. She was like her father’s assistant. Since then her political careers began. By attending various meetings, gatherings and seminars along with her father her political knowledge and understanding grown up and got an opportunity to be an active memeber of ward. Once when the leader of Tarun Dal Mr. Susant Koirala came to Birgunj he nominatedher as district member of Tarun Dal due to her ability and capacity. She just started to enhance her speech. Literally, at that point of time she was engaged in NGO as a social mobiliser. NGO helped her out to build relation with community. Due to her ability and working capacity party encouraged her to participate in local election as memeber. Then she participated in the election and elected as a ward woman member. Despite many challenges even after becoming a ward member, she felt that municipality mechanisms have failed to treat women as equals to men. Some male counterparts even don’t want to involve women in the municipal level program. The male voices are heard and given priority. Women’s works are unnoticed.’ However, she felt that her performance, perseverance, and sincerity had been assessed fairly by the party and the community people. Promoting her social work, people in the community were encouraging her to fight for deputy mayor in the upcoming elections. Under the "She Leads Program" implement by Mandwi, she got the opportunity to participate in events such as EWR Profiling Survey, International Youth Day, and International Day of Democracy. She is very happy to participate in the program and learn about this project. Fairly speaking, she had never ever participated in such a special event which has solely work for elected women representatives’ capacity building initiatives. She strongly believes that such programs and discussion meeting helped her capacity and develop her personality. She hoped that a lot of capacity will be developed through this program in coming days. Earlier, she used to speak only in ward and municipality level meetings, but after participating in the "She Leads program", she developed new capacity by participating in the events of International Youth Day and International Day of Democracy. Also, she thinks that according to the discussion on the meaningful participation of youth women in politics on the day of the International Youth Day program, this project will be very effective for the upcoming elections. In addition, the project seeks to focus all stakeholders on the meaningful participation of women in the upcoming elections and believe "She Leads Program" will develop her leadership capacity the days to come.