Forty women from diverse backgrounds – students, school teachers, Karate students, some gender champions, UMN women and partner staff – participated in a three-day self-defence workshop towards the end of April in Bajhang. The workshop was facilitated by Fightback, a sexual violence risk reduction education programme to teach self-defence and strengthen the participants’ mental, psychological, emotional and physical capabilities.

The workshop also included dialogues around comprehensively combating gender-based violence. To sustain the workshop’s outcome, there’s a plan to adapt and use self-defence in future by using peer sharing or learning, transferring skills to their community groups or in schools or with ongoing projects. The participants have now made action plans and are currently holding self-defence sessions in the communities, which was a major objective.

During the last week of April, similar training took place in four schools of Nawalparasi West organised by Girls Kick, an NGO. In total 200 adolescent girls, 50 from each school, participated in the training which intended to make them aware about what violence is, abuse, exploitation, and risk factors/areas where it might happen. It also taught them physical techniques and skills to defend themselves if someone attacked them or in case of sexual harassment.

All power to these ladies! Similar training has taken place in UMN in the past too.