Country Strategic Plan. (Please give us your views)

Hello all

The program office is busy at the moment in developing the country specific plan, as Arlene and Eva updated us on during the last AVC.  Besides the research and strategic directions that VSO international is moving in, we are also interested to hear your voice and opinion. We have developed a survey of 10 questions that will give you the chance to provide advice and feedback from the ground reality of the VSO Nepal placements. We would like to ask you to take 5 minutes to help us collecting all the opinions, ideas and suggestions so that we can compile this all and give it to the program office in order to inform them during the further development. At this moment, the outcomes of the plan are depending on a number of things, so our survey will not decide the course that the strategic plan is taking, but it will give us a chance to advice the program office what to think about during that course. The outcomes of the survey will be presented on the STEPS blog on the special CSP page where you can read all the developments regarding the country strategic plan. And to make things a little more exciting, we will draw 2 names from all the people that participate in the survey (we will only look who has completed the survey, but your choices are anonymous) and they will win a 3 course dinner and a cocktail or a drink in the Red Dingo restaurant in Kathmandu(including transport from- and to the PGH, one of the best restaurants in town!

Follow this link to complete the survey

Enjoy and thank you for participating

STEPS

Working towards an end product.... Linda Ris 2011

Photograph Competition. Entry 6

The benchmark is getting higher…

“Marginalised in Nepal”

In preparation to volunteering, I attended a crash course in “community organising/CO”…

In the Philippines, NGOs/INGOs term for the marginalized is PDO, meaning: poor, deprived, oppressed — and description is: woman, ugly, dark skin, unschooled…

Here in Nepal, my placement is with Dalit… I believe they are the poor in Nepal — especially if one is a woman (it is double jopardy!)

Positive characteristics of the poor:

1.  The poor are hardworking

2.  The poor is persistent

3.  The poor have their own innate intelligence and wisdom

4.  The poor have a lot of experiences in solving problems on a daily basis

5.  The poor’s power is in their number’

Alicia Pedraya-Roxas

VSO Volunteer/OD Adviser

Dalit Welfare Organization

Dharan, Sunsari District