CWD – Centre for Women Development

Besides from working with DWO half of my time will be spent with CWD, Centre for Women Development. CWD is a small community based organisation started by women from the area in 1997. The overall vision of the organisation is to improve the livelihood of women in Nepal. The organisation works with 40 women’s groups – established by CWD – in Banke, Bardiya and Surkhet districts. These groups receive training in everything from literacy, health and group formation to bookkeeping, human rights and domestic violence.

CWD gives these women the knowledge and self-esteem they need to be able to improve their life and the life of their family. CWD helps these women become independent women able to demand their rights on both local and national level.

During my visit with CWD we visited two of these women’s groups. It is clear that CWD have had great success with their work. One of the groups has functioned in almost 10 years and all the women are now able to make their own money – thanks to CWD. Not only does this mean that they are able to feed their family, but also that they can send all of their children to school. One of the women in this group has been elected as board member of CWD, while another woman has been offered a job with a national NGO. These progresses would have been unimaginable for these women only 10 years ago.

My work with CWD
As with DWO my role at CWD is as advisor. I will mainly work at the organisations office (see the picture) in Khajura about 4 miles from Nepalgunj. But naturally I will also be visiting the different women’s groups in order to form an impression of the work in the groups and asses in which areas CWD can improve their support to the groups.
Despite the fact that I will be working in the same areas as with DWO, the tasks are quite different. Especially one task sounds appealing to me; 6 of the groups have decided to get together and form a cooperative and thereby leave CWD. This decision is fully backed by CWD, but they are very much aware that the cooperative will need a lot of support and help in the initial start-up phase, where many important decisions need to be made. CWD has asked me to advise them in this process. It will be incredibly exciting to work with and follow the creation of this cooperative during the next two years.

My colleagues at CWD are all women. The vast majority are women who themselves started as member of a women’s group and now have worked their way up to organisational level. They are strong and committed women that feel really strongly about their work with CWD. I will be working closely with Khagi, project coordinator and Purnakala, the organisations secretary. Both are great women but unfortunately, they hardly speak any English, so the first couple of months will be hard.

CWD is an organisation that in only 10 years has worked its way up to being the leading women rights organisation in Mid-West Nepal and it will be incredibly exciting to work with such a dynamic organisation.