Now that the council of youth activists in Nepal have their own plan of action from our training in Dilukhel, we left the next morning to return to Kathmandu and conduct our "part II" of my trip...which was for them meet with various stakeholders working on youth sexual and reproductive health and rights to share their plans for the year and potentially identify points of collaboration or advocacy entry points (depending if we're talking to local organizations or policymakers!).

We met with the:

-Program Manager in the Youth Section of the Family Planning Association of Nepal (FPAN);
-the Joint-Secretary in the Ministry of Youth;
-Program Coordinator of the National Network of Women Living with HIV/AIDS and Program Coordinators of Solid Nepal; and, what would have been the
-Regional Director of UNFPA-Asia and the Pacific (but that was cancelled at the last minute—booo! Meeting to be rescheduled).

In reality, traffic is so hectic in Kathmandu that this was as much as we could have done in 2 days especially including our debriefs back at the YUWA office to discuss and develop follow-up plans.

OK...so after all the discussions with our colleagues who were very familiar with the landscape of advocacy in Nepal, we were pleased to learn some best practices and discover that they were advocating for a better, more comprehensive sexuality education curricula too.

In-between the meetings, the council members and I were split up in various taxi drivers and stuck in HEAVY road traffic. This allowed us to talk and…talk and…talk some more about all sorts of things.

Personally, I learned so much about traditional Nepalese culture from these intimate conversations—and definitely nothing I’ve found through my own research online. I learned about the challenges they face with dating and talking to their parents about sex. I also learned the struggles they face with trying to change their parents’ traditional attitudes and beliefs, particularly towards gender and sexuality.

For example, Sanskriti is trying to teach her mother that it’s not right to follow the traditional belief that if your daughter is menstruating, she’s associated with evil and is forbidden to be in the kitchen. During a girl’s first menstruation, she must be completely isolated from everyone and stay in a farm with cow dung during the entire week.

This led to a whole other conversation of better ways to change her mother’s beliefs; one idea being to have Rojy’s progressive mother—one that could definitely relate to Sanskrit’s mother—talk to her about these various traditional beliefs and how the conflict with women’s integrity and rights.

Aside from the heavy road traffic in Kathmandu, I’ve learned so much from these youth activists these past few days. Seeing them in action at meetings demanding that the Ministry of Youth take accountability for involving young people (especially since it's the International Year of Youth!) or thinking critically together about how to change traditional norms around gender and menstruation in long cab rides in-between all of these meetings—has inspired me on so many levels.

They will transform Nepalese society.

Now that I'm back in DC, I’m so pleased to reflect on the entire time I spent with them and how I now have a whole new set of friends and even better—PASSIONATE friends working on sexual and reproductive rights!