DidiBahini At Present

Besides being active with many different national and international networks, DidiBahini at present has been working with gender, marginalized communities with the vision of social transformation and constantly addressing their immediate needs and education/ socio psychological issues. It is focusing on supporting, advocating and mobilizing everyone in the community, be that youth, children and adult men, women , LGBTQ+ and senior citizens. As an issue focused organization, it is providing a common platform for learning, sharing authentic information and access to various sectors such as life-long learning skills, basic literacy for elderly women, health and livelihood for the deprived and vulnerable groups.

With the holistic people centered development approach in addressing the needs of the communities, DidiBahini is mobilizing mainly its women and youth groups through its community based Development, Learning and Resource Centers (DLRC). The activities carried out in the DLRCs cover a wide range of community-based development programs including education, health, economic and environmental sustainability, capacity-building, life-long learning skills, developing and strengthening Community Safety Nets (CSN) and advocacy. Through DLRCs, communities, especially under-privileged and marginalized people are given route access for social inclusion.  Apparently, DLRCs under DidiBahini are running in different municipalities of Kathmandu (slum area), Kavre and Lalitpur districts.

Acknowledging the fact that youths are the bridge between the two generations i.e. elderly/ adults and children, Youths are acting as the mediator to fill the gap and lead towards the positive impacts. At the crucial time of this COVID19 pandemic, youth group members of DB were actively engaged in the awareness campaigns, teaching-learning processes and initiating different innovative community development activities like collective farming, gardening, tree plantation, environment and cultural heritage protection /promotion, disaster relief and rescue management, facilitating e- library, information  communication and virtual learning  platforms etc. Since, DB understands the necessity and importance of the role of youths in the social transformation and development, it has been facilitating various training like Life Skills, Sexual and Reproductive health, Cyber security, Self-defense, Socio Psycho Counseling ,  local resource mobilization etc. As a result, amidst the pandemic youth are engaged in leading the activities such as ensuring,  sharing and making proper flow of information among community people, monitoring and facilitating peace and justice at home, raising awareness on potential GBV and domestic violence, providing socio psycho counseling for their peer groups, running online education classes for children and coordinating with local governments to distribute food and medical support to ultra poor and marginalized groups of their communities. Some of the youth leaders are also using the social media contents and online process to deal with the educational crisis and raising their voices as a strong advocacy tool. Similarly, amidst the pandemic, youths of DB have created opportunities out of crisis. They are actively engaged in agriculture by planting their own kitchen/ roof top gardens and farming in the fallow lands around to motivate and demonstrate the community people to engage in growing food at home for food security, self-reliance and sustainability. The havoc created by the COVID-19 has terrified people in the community to the international level. So far, the youths of DB are standing as frontline leaders to support, share and spread the positive impacts all around through their initiation in agriculture production at kitchen garden or online education or food and other relief distribution. DB is proud to have its strong women and youth groups being very active in strengthening community safety nets for holistic development of their communities and demonstrating role models in the country.

Besides grey environment like social, political and legal reforms DB has always been mobilizing its communities in promotion and protection of green environment and climate change issues as one of its core values. Therefore, as one of the core members of C & D ( Climate and Development ) network  DB have also  been active in the policy advocacy level and through the other national level feminist RRTF (relief recovery task force) working together in immediate relief on the spot as well as mainstreaming gender responsive disaster management and recovery policy, planning and implementation as well.