Violence against women and abuse of all low caste people are deeply embedded in the culture of Nepal, where I was born. Due to the lack of education and opportunities, women, especially of low caste are suffering greatly. They are treated worse than animals. I have seen and experienced this.

As a girl from a low caste family, I have had to overcome many obstacles myself. I had the good fortune to grow up in a loving family (we are nine children), where I was always encouraged to go to school in spite of much social opposition. I was born in Gorkha District, a remote part of Nepal. My parents are subsistence farmers, and my mother, like most Nepali women has never learned to read. When I was growing up, girls, especially of lower caste, were not sent to school. It was a struggle for me, too, because I was teased and humiliated, both by other children and by many teachers. It hurt me a lot, but I was always strong inside and did not react to the insults I suffered. I just studied hard. Being first in my class, I was given a scholarship, so I could continue with secondary school. This new school was a two-hour walk from my home. One of my teachers was an American Peace Corps Volunteer who did not care what caste I belonged to. With his encouragement and help, I won a scholarship from the Himalaya Foundation to continue my studies in Kathmandu. In my village, I was the first girl ever to complete tenth grade. My girlfriends all succumbed to the social pressure and left school. However, since then, many girls have completed secondary school.

After graduation from high school in Kathmandu, I did a yearlong internship with Center for Self-help Development, a group of non-government organizations, working with poor people in Terai Region of Nepal. This work opened my eyes to the suffering of rural, low-caste women, and the enormous difficulties they face. It gave a clear direction for my own life. I was involved in a program that tried to control girl trafficking, where low caste young girls are sold into prostitution in India. I was mainly working as a facilitator, however, forming women’s empowerment groups, which included education about micro-loan programs. These small loans enable poor women to reach a degree of independence from their husbands and families. Unfortunately, the rules set up by the Grumman Trust of Bangladesh do not allow the poorest, landless, low caste women to borrow money. We had to turn away the neediest women, because they had no collateral. The experience of that year affected me deeply. I decided then to create a program that gave the poorest people the same chance for bettering themselves.

In 1996 I managed to get a small fund from Active Women of Nepal (AWON) and established my own NGO. Our volunteers go into the poorest rural communities and form groups of low caste women, who own nothing of their own. We teach them about the micro loan program: With a small sum, a group of women may raise chickens, a goat or vegetables, from which they then generate income and savings. Since most women cannot read or write, we also teach literacy, the key to empowerment