Voice of a Woman for Women

Social values and norms are made to make people disciplined and to make their living standard better. But in our society some of the traditional beliefs and cultures are making people's life hard and difficult. In most of the parts of Nepal, the girls still excluded from education.

Beside that girls are more confined to house work than outside. Because of this parents often belief that education is not necessary for them, and they think that they should be perfect on managing house work only. Since I am working in NGO which broadcast different awareness radio programs, among them Saathi Sanga Manka Kura (Chatting with my Best friends) and Samajhdari covers the issues like teenage problems and violence against women respectively. Many audience responses are received through letters, emails and SMS. It is my responsibility to do the database management these responses and to prepare analysis report. While going through these responses it is quite painful that some female listeners despite their willingness have to discontinue their study due to some social cause as stated above. Even some listeners complain that their brothers are admitted at good boarding school whereas they are admitted to local school. Stories of such discrimination are countless in our database.

People at urban region are gradually realizing the importance of girls' education; however the people at rural community are still stuck to their misconception. So it is our duty to aware these people on the importance of education to their daughters. They further should understand \"educating a woman means educating a family\".

These days some women have enrolled themselves in adult literacy classes, which I must say is a great start. In such classes I desire to include basic computer course that will include how to use computer, how to use Internet, how to get access to information, how to email. Even we can mobilize some educated girls and women of the same community willing to do volunteer work. Although it is an ambitious plan, I am quite sure when women get used to it, they would find it as the best place to share their feeling, problem and to find the appropriate solution. My aunt who is not educated learnt to use computer to communicate with her son and daughter who are abroad, now she is regularly using Internet without anyone support. She used to share with me how she chatted with my cousins and how she emailed and how she uploaded and downloaded the photos. I really feel proud of her.

Small start can make big difference. If we can include importance of computer in adult literacy class as well communicate this message through radio program, the computer application such as PulseWire can gather many voices of rural communities. If I am not too ambitious in my plan, there would be dual benefit for women \"women uniting for disseminating their voice through Internet \".