Date: 11 Falgun, 2078
Venue: Alfa house, Baneshwor
A broad interaction and discussion was made among the women entrepreneurs and other participants from different organizations. The program was done mainly focusing on women entrepreneurs so they can share their experiences among all other which can be further motivation and also with the aim of providing suggestions & feedbacks for the areas of improvement to be made.
The program was officially started by chairperson Mrs. Sita Khadka with a welcome speech and short introduction about organization, its objectives and most importantly she highlighted the context of women enterpreneurs in our country. The major chief guests present in the program were Dr. Sindhu Dhungana (Assistant secretary) from department of forest and environment, Bharati Pathak (chairperson of FECOFUN), Ghanshyam Pandey (Mayor of Tulsipur Metropolitian city), Birkha Shahi (Central secretary general from FECOFUN). There was presence of women entrepreneurs from different organizations and group.
A young entrepreneur, 18 years old Prenana Paswan gave a presentation about her journey of entrepreneurship. Prenana has been operating her business through instagram which is all about handmade products. She shared her journey of entrepreneurship how she used to be shy to sell her products in the beginning of her career. It has already been two years as she started her online business and now she also works in collaboration with others. She has set an example in the field of entrepreneurship at a very young age. She encouraged and motivated all other women participants to have faith and work independently.
Mrs. Shanta Neupane also shared her journey of entrepreneurship. She remembered her beginning days when it really used to be hard for a woman to be trusted when she wanted to work independently. She kept forward her experiences of overall business journey, how people used to discourage her by saying she will go on debt in few years. Despite those words she kept the courage to stand by her willingness to prove that women can also run business efficiently if they dream and she succeded on doing so.
Mr. Ghanshyam Pandey expressed his gratitude seeing women entrepreneurs and their strong determination of working independently. He also said that he felt very happy listening about Prerana’s business, how she started and how she is growing. He encouraged and motivated the participants to have faith in themselves and achieve their goal. Mr. Birkha also added his few points and experiences that he had. He mentioned how his daughter also used to buy handmade products and be happy with the little things made. With this he recollected his memories on how women have been successfully doing business starting from small scale and reaching to the peak.
Women entrepreneurs from different districts like Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, Kathmandu, Kavre were present in the program. They also shared their experiences how they started, what types of challenges they faced during their entire journey and so on. A wide discussion and interaction was made among all the participants. Many of them were involved in agriculture, floriculture, also few of them were involved in production of organic manure.
There was also presence of woman entrepreneur who have been employed by selling “dhup” from a long period of time. She remembered the day when she was asked to attend the training for making dhup in her locality, where others denied to participate in the training. She said that was the turning point of her career, she learnt a few things from there and started to work in home for making dhup. But that was not enough as few techniques were missing that she couldn’t address at that time. Once she got a chance to visit the industry and learnt the modalities that were missing and since then she excelled on that field and is giving continuity to her work. She also added for a woman to be successful, family support is the most important thing.
Women entrepreneurs also stated how differently society sees if a woman wants to work for herself. One of the participant kept forward her story of childhood when she used to work in fields with her father and crops grown by her used to be better in quality and quantity than that grown by her father, brother. But her efforts were not appreciated at that time, it took a very long for her own family to understand and accept that she is capable than others. So the scenario and society has been always a reason that keeps women to lag behind.
The chairperson of FECOFUN, Bharati Pathak welcomed all the participants and kept her thoughts on policies, rules about women empowerment. She said though kept in rules all the people have not fully accepted. She added FECOFUN is always there to support the local peoples. She also wanted women entrepreneurs to work in collaboration as knowledge of expertise and the unused forest areas can be utilized. The technical works as well as agroforestry practices can be merged and can take it in next level. She added knowledge and experience should be shared and forest, agriculture and enterprise should be taken together.
Dr. Sindhu Dhungana gave examples how rights of women are taken into consideration. Thoughts like male should only be involved works where income is high should be removed he said. He expressed how the policies made have not been implemented wisely. He encouraged women to raise voice for their rights and stand forward with strong determination. He also promised that policies made in favor of women will soon to implement accordingly by the effective working modalities.
And the closing of program was finally done by Chairperson, Sita Khadka thanking all the participants. Overall the program went very interactively as participants, panelists, presenters kept their opinions and experiences.
