Summary:

Pashupati Sunar is working as HRAA coordinator through HRAA of previous Badakhola Village Development Committee, (now Mahabu Municipality) of Dailekh. She is also a member of District HRAA. Her husband is in Gulf in course of job and she has raised four children on her own. Apart from this, she is also involved in cultivating land for her family livelihood.

Born and raised in rural areas of the country she was not allowed to attend public programs. There is a trend of limiting women within household chores. She used to scare to face public mass. Given the situation, she involved in social work as HRAA coordinator. After involved in various social activities she enhanced her self-confidence and started leading in various community forums strongly. After witnessing her leading capacity community leaders praised her deeds to raise cases of human rights violations. This helped her to build her personnel skills.

Encouraged by social involvement Pashupati fielded her as women candidate. Her involvement in social works also helped to win the elections.

Challenges:

Women rarely participate the public forums. Their participation in public gathering is still considered as social taboo in rural parts of the country. Generally, women are confined to household chores and prohibited to participate or lead the community Despite social stigma Pashupati got opportunity to participate in social activities and succeed to prove her leadership capacity in her community. Initially, she was deprived of participating n social activities and her responsibilities are fully confined to household activities.

Initiative:

When other women were limited within household chores she heard about HRAA network and expressed her keen interest to be the part of this mechanism. Later, she succeeded to lead HRAA in her VDC. Before joining the network she had difficulty to introduce herself in public masses. However, things have now changed significantly. Currently, she is active organizing programs and lobbying with the local units on how to ensure rights of Dalit and marginalized communities. Ahead of local elections, she made up her mind to contest elections and filed her candidacy. Fortunately, she elected as Dalit member in her rural municipality. She seems to initiate reforms in various sectors particularly abolishing Mahabu municipality as cast discrimination-free local unit.  

Results:

Local people have acknowledged her contribution made so far. They are expecting more reforms from her leadership. She is more focused on sensitizing community people in recent days. Pashupati is determined about brining change in her society. “All sorts of difficulties can be resolved if all people in the community are aware and agree to work together. But when you start working individually there will only obstacles in your work. So, I am determined to declare our community as human rights friendly VDC. I will do my best to lobby for this in all available platforms. As an advisor of HRAA in our VDC I will work for play role of bridge between local authorities and the community to strengthen campaign against discriminations.”