Building a united Nepal: Madheshi and Pahadi

The Nepalese trustbuilding team has been on across their country, launching their trustbuilding project which officially began on 7 March, 2021, in Janakpur.  

On their one-month journey, the team visited Itahari, Inaruwa, Bardibas, and Janakpur, to present their project to stakeholders. The vision for the Nepalese trustbuilding project is to build a united Nepal, where each Nepali resident is treated equally and respectfully, regardless of their caste, language, ethnicity, gender, or geography. Two goals of the project are to: 

• Reinstate harmony and understanding between the different multicultural and multilingual communities and; 
• Establish a culture of effective dialogue and interaction between Madheshi and Pahadi, better known as ‘Hill’, communities 

The second point is highly imperative to social cohesion and many challenges exist. They believe that social transformation is possible only when the youths of Hills and Madhesh share openly about their problems and jointly rewrite new narratives of friendship, trust, co-existence and unity.   

During the official launch, the project was inaugurated by Gyanendra Kumar Yadav, Minister of Internal Affairs and Law from Province Number-2. He expressed his commitment to support the project, as he also strongly believes that all forms of discrimination should be ended. This great news, plus the launch and project of the team, made it into a regional newspaper.

The trustbuilding team in Nepal has set up a variety of partnerships already, such as signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Koshi Rural Municipality to set up a strategic partnership for building a better community in the area by collaborating on engaging youth, staff, and stakeholders in IofC trainings to build care, trust, ethical leadership, and positive personal change. 

Another partner organization is the Youth Development Center in Itahari, where a multi-stakeholder trustbuilding workshop was conducted with the members of different political parties, corporate leaders, women group leaders, government officials, leaders of local youth groups, the National Youth Council, the head of the College, entrepreneurs, international organizations and a media person. 

Youth play a key role in the trustbuilding project in Nepal, as evidenced by the collaborations with the Mahottari Network of Youth and the Janasahayogi Youth Network, and the outreaches in colleges and schools, like at the Nava Kshitiz College Outreach (in the video below) and Saraswati Higher Secondary School in Itahari. 'Everyone has struggled in life and it depends on the individual how to look past that and move on for a better life', shared one of the participants after a training session with the team. 

We wish the trustbuilding team in Nepal the best of luck with the further delivery of the project and their future trustbuilding activities with youths from both the Madheshi and Pahadi communities.

*Photo by IofC Nepal

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The Trustbuilding Program is aimed at addressing divisive issues at the international and national levels, on the premise that only those who have undergone the internal process of becoming trustworthy themselves can close gaps across the globe. The Program was launched by Initiatives of Change International in 2019 with projects in Kenya, Canada and France, and in 2021 Australia, Indonesia, Nepal and South Africa have joined as well.