| rai |
Posted
on 07-Nov-02 03:21 AM
Just to inform the fellow sajhaties
Nov 6th was marked as the Operation days work in whole Denmark . This year about 30 thousand highschool students volunteered to work for a day to collect money that will be donated to educate the KAMAIYAS children in Nepal. They worked as cleaner , newpaper distributor , at burger joints , sold coffee , mowed lawns , etc etc . and collected about 6.5 million kroners ( which is a bit less than 1 million US dollars ) and was about 30 percent more than the last years collection.
Project was cooperation between Various Danish Organisation (MS, DANIDA)and BASE , was widely publicised in Denmark and got the best interest from the general public too.On the other hand there was a kind of negative publicity form the Youth organisation of the Ruling Party ( Rightist), about all these collected donation will be used to support the Maoist , but this doesnot seem to hold on as the Operation progessed.
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| ashu |
Posted
on 07-Nov-02 06:25 AM
Good to hear about this initiative in Denmark.
MS-Nepal (a Danish NGO that has long been working for the ex-kamaiyas in Nepal) has, on the whole, done an outstanding job, raising awareness about the ex-kamaiyas in the media of Nepal and Denmark. [In Kathmandu, DANIDA's HUGOU unit, among others, was quite active in campaigining for the freedom of the then kamaiyas.]
Special congrats must go to Tim Whyte and Binay Dhital and Peter Lowe and to many other Danish and Nepali people for all their hard work.
BASE -- or Backward Society Education, headquartered in Tulsipur, Dang -- is a Nepali NGO and remains Nepal's largest NGO in terms of the the number of members, though it surely has its problems and constraints.
[Contrary to what anthropologist Shaubhagya Shah writes in his "State of Nepal" essay (the essay that has just been republished in the latest issue of Himal South Asia, and Paschim had provided a link here just yesterday), it is the state with its rosy promises, resentment against the NGOs and its bureaucratically delaying tactics and NOT the NGOs that is to be blamed all the more for the neglect of the kamaiyas subsequent to their emancipation.]
On a personal note, I have long been proud to be associated with BASE as one of its ardent well-wishers. The time (altogether more than a full-year) I have spent with or for BASE, as a volunteer, traveling deep into the villages of Kailali, Kanchanpur, Bardiya, Dang and Banke, has, on looking back, changed my life in many positive
ways . . . ways I cannot and could not have imagined.
This is one reason why it's great to see BASE's efforts highlighted in foreign media as well.
oohi
ashu
ktm,nepal
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