Teaching English to Young Women volunteering program in Nepal

Project at a glance:

Nepal is just in a developing stage. It requires more human resources and manpower for rapid development. The English language is least used in the country. Although the language has been started using widely but still there is a lacking part. People still don’t get to understand properly that hinders in their jobs. Specially women are backward in this case.

In Nepal, though the time has changed but still women are faced with discrimination. Mostly women after marriage are fully depended on their husband as a female child hardly gets education in Nepal. Their husband and in laws underestimate or abuse them by taking advantage of her dependence on her husband income for survival. Many women are forcefully bounded to their household and field activities. The society don’t want to accept working abilities of women and their dexterity are easily ignored. Women need to be able to speak good English to access career options through the internet, through authentic materials in the English language and because companies prefer to employ people with good spoken English also they need to be aware about their own fundamental rights.

If they are given education, they can be literate, understand the languages and can work towards development of them as well country by building up self-confidence and self dependency inheriting their own skills. They need to be taught to explore to understand the world, to communicate.

VIN’s mission is to empower marginalized communities, with a focus on women and children, through enhanced educational programs and community training to promote equality, economic well being and basic human rights.

VIN runs women education classes in much needy communities. VIN has trained over 200 women in literacy classes in 2009, which are taught by other local women and overseen by the women’s programme expert to help everyone learn to a good standard.

Working towards women’s empowerment enables you to support women in their pursuit of healthy and sustainable livelihoods. Women’s groups provide a forum for issues such as family health, women’s rights, and access to resources, income generation, and other challenges women face in their daily lives. Volunteers have the opportunity to exchange ideas, teach basic English skills, help with small businesses, and be a positive role model. You can also provide support in many other ways, depending on your skills and interests and the needs of the local community.

If you are interested in other programmes in empowering women than teaching English VIN also has the following key programmes to empower the local women:

• Teaching English Language for young women
• Education (Literacy) and awareness
• Saving and credit (micro-credit)
• Income generative skills training
• Women’s health

The women receive skills-orientated training so that they can generate some income through projects such as vegetable farming (organic and non organic), livestock, incense making, candle making, dry food making. They have regular meetings and save some money every month in their saving-credit groups. The women are also given training in organic agriculture to help the organic movement, which is labor intensive and to give people a chance to meet, talk, learn and exchange views with others in the movement.

Roles of Volunteers:

• Work with VIN’s local staff to train women
• Help women’s groups for account keeping
• Work with women in their farm
• Awareness raising activities
• Women’s rights
• Women’s health issues
• Life skills, e.g. leaderships skills, decision making, communication, problem solving, coping with stress
• Teach English language to young women
• Develop small grant proposals to fund women’s empowerment programs
• Research for funding agencies and raise funds for local projects

So VIN invites all interested national and international volunteers to be part of our women’s development programmes. Come with expertise and help women learn or come with no expertise and learn together. Your small effort can make a big difference to women in the most marginalized communities. You will be working with women of a totally different culture and lifestyle.

Let’s help women to leave their homes and experience the outer world!