My recent Delhi visit in picture

Few glimpses captured during the 46th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors, held in Delhi, India, from 2 to 5 May 2013. It was really a good opportunity for knowledge sharing and partnership. The ADB seminar series, sponsored programs, civil society program and host country events were fruitful. 

With India's finance minister P. Chidambaram at ADB's host country reception. 
 

Beautiful girls welcoming to the ADB delegates at Jaypee Green hotel in Greater Noida, Delhi 

With Nepal's Finance Minister Shanker P. Koirala

With ADB president Takehiko Nakao at the reception party hosted by him for  ADB delegates 

In Nepal, scholarships empower Dalit girls

Seven years ago, 25 Dalit girls were given a chance to go to college. Today, they are role models for other Dalit daughters, and their parents.

In Nepalese society, where caste-based discrimination is all-too common, being a Dalit ("untouchable") means facing a life without access to opportunity – educational, economic or political.

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  Participants in the Empowering Dalit Daughters programme pose for a portrait. From left, Rebica Nepali, Hira Nepali, Sangita B.K., Pramila Bishunkhe, Anju Kadel and Barshaa Prakash, The programme provided scholarships, food and accommodation to 25 Dalit girls from across Nepal. [Photos courtesy of Professional Development and Research Centre (PDRC)]
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  Hema Shreepaile, 23, an Empowering Dalit Daughters programme scholar, won the Gold Medal for scoring highest marks in the Bachelors in Hotel Management from Tribhuvan University.

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Being female merely adds to the challenge. According to the 2001 census, only 43% of the Dalit population is literate, and the rate is much lower among Dalit women.

"Dalit women face double discrimination – added to the discrimination based on caste, they also face gender-based discrimination," said Birendra Bishwokarma, executive director of the Professional Development and Research Centre (PDRC), a non-governmental organisation that works on Dalit issues.

"Even if they are talented, Dalit girls rarely get chances to get higher education and reach leadership positions," he told Khabar South Asia.

Back in 2006, PDRC took steps to change that, through "Empowering Dalit Daughters," a scholarship programme for Dalit girls.

With financial support from the Nepal Youth Foundation, it embarked on a nationwide talent hunt to select 25 talented and motivated Dalit girls. They received scholarships to prestigious colleges in Kathmandu, as well as food and accommodation at a hostel in the capital for six years.

Before being placed in top colleges, the students received training in leadership, counseling and communications skills.

"The objective of the programme was to create role models out of these girls, which we believe will help make people aware about the importance of educating their daughters," Bishwokarma said. "It was also an effort to bring the leadership developed at local level into national level."

Success stories

Better education has translated into better opportunities for these young women. Hema Shreepaile, 23, and Mala Nepali, 24, are two of them. Shreepaile works at the prestigious Hotel Annapurna in Kathmandu, while Nepali is employed with an education consultancy in the city.

Shreepaile, who hails from Kailali district in western Nepal, scored Gold Medal from Tribhuvan University in 2012 for earning highest marks in the Bachelor's in Hotel Management programme.

"I feel very happy to have received the scholarship," Shreepaile told Khabar. "It helped me in many ways. It supported me financially to achieve my dreams. It also provided me a learning environment, helped me become more confident about myself and develop leadership qualities.

"Living with 24 students of different cultures from different parts of the country helped me learn a lot about their cultures, as well," she added.

Mala Nepali says the programme has not only helped her, but inspired others.

"More and more people in my community have begun sending their daughters to school nowadays," she said. "Sometimes, I have found mothers telling their daughters that they should study and become like me. It pleases me to know that I am inspiring some people."

Two of the 25 participants have finished their graduate studies; 13 have completed their undergraduate programmes; five more are waiting for their final results.

According to Bishwokarma, the assistance will continue. "Although as of now, we do not have funds to repeat the programme, PDRC intends to keep supporting more Dalit girls by providing them with training and connecting them with scholarship opportunities nationally and internationally," he told Khabar.

Bidhyanath Koirala, an educator, believes such efforts to educate girls is beneficial to the community as a whole. "Since girls are more connected to their family and their community, educating girls can have huge impact," he told Khabar.

By Surath Giri for Khabar South Asia in Kathmandu published on 3 June, 2013 

Excited About Young Talent

Having the privilege to work in Botswana and in Nepal is something that I don’t take for granted. I commit myself to the projects I am working on and do my best to become a subject matter expert about the issue we are trying to deal with. In Botswana I immersed myself in HIV/AIDS material and the statistics the government was producing, and with the influence of many TED Talks and other fabulously passionate people such as Melissa Godwalt (A Canadian living and working in Botswana who is thoughtful and with thought provoking presentations) I tried to make the issue jump out at people. In other words, used marketing and state of the art presentation techniques to slap people in the face so they would take notice.

In Botswana, this seemed to work. Change resulted, the civil society organizations started to work together in a new, trusting way and USAID and other donors started to pay more attention to the region of Ngamiland, the region with the highest infection levels in the world. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to take credit for all the positive change, that would be so far from the truth. The truth is, I could not do any of the networking and change management had I not had real talent behind me.

This is what is exciting about what I do. I get to work with some incredibly talented, dedicated and capable people from all over the world and in the process smash some misconceptions about the young and those from the developing world. Kelly Lui, although not from the developing world was one of the real treasures of my time in Botswana.

She not only was great to work with, she became a good friend and hopefully future business partner or associate.

Kelly hadn’t had a great deal of experience prior to our work together, but what she lacked in experience she made up for with focus, determination and really fast typing. (I am not kidding, really fast. Break the keyboard fast.) Kelly did the lions share of work at NCONGO while I was trying to get attention for the organization and market it.

Lesson Learned: This is a best practice that I think can be adopted by many organizations: give direction and thorough vision to your staff and then get out of the way.

The next talented person I worked with was a young woman from Botswana named Charity Thite. Charity has travelled very little outside of Botswana, but has a wealth of insight and a real way of getting the work done. Charity again had little experience when she was hired but quickly was thrown into the job feet first. Sink or swim. Charity worked alongside Kelly and picked up on Kellys good work habits and did she ever learn. She was encouraged to puzzle things out for herself and when she had thought through a problem and couldn’t solve it, then come to Kelly or me. Charity with all her inexperience soon took ownership of the organization,even though her title didn’t reflect that. (Charity is so talented and capable, I am trying to find an opportunity for her in Canada or the US so she can further hone her skills.)

Lesson learned: Let some of your staff struggle so they can stretch and grow confidence in their own intuition and body of knowledge.

Finally, here in Kathmandu I am working with a young man who, similar to Charity, has taken ownership of an organization despite the lack of title. Rup Sunar is smart, technically savvy and very coachable. Rup, next to my good friend Jeff Brown, is the most coachable person I have come across. Rup listens and doesn’t give much feedback,but then thinks a concept through and puts it into action. I have been working in the last two months to try to show the organization that marketing matters. Everything we do creates a client or stakeholder experience and we must manage that carefully. Even though this is a very modest organization with little funding, the entrance, the greeting, the signage and the presentations printed send a message about the organization. Rup gets it. Thankfully, because it would be a challenging time in Nepal if the de-facto leader of the organization didn’t get it.

Tomorrow Rup and I are going to be talking about how to work a room full of people and to make friends out of new networking acquaintances. You see Rup will be heading to Delhi to the Asian Development Bank Annual General Meeting (I was to go but could not get a visa in time) and representing the PDRC. Not the little grassroots PDRC begging for money, but the PDRC “Business” that can offer insights and information helpful to all those in attendance in Delhi. He is not going to beg, but to sell the vision that this organisation can offer.

Lesson Learned: Coach in small stories and tools and stand back. Watch the implementation and offer support. And think like a business.

This is a blog written by Blair Henry, PDRC's organizational development advisor. You can read his other blogs at http://www.blairhenry.info/