A few hours after our arrival in Lahan, it is time to get to work. The next two days will be spent in day-long meetings with representatives (or ‘campaigners’) from nine local NGO’s who WRRP has partnered with in surrounding villages. For me, this is a great introduction into the structure of WRRP programs in the field.

Within the Lahan district, WRRP has one program office – which is where Sunita and I will be based for the next week and a half. In order to be most effective in the villages in which they work, WRRP runs its village programs in partnership with local NGO’s based in these villages. This seems to be a very effective structure as these local NGO’s are already familiar with the dynamics of running programs in their particular village. While each NGO runs independently, each has also partnered with WRRP to run uterine prolapse support and prevention programs. As such, one campaigner from each NGO has come to attend this two day meeting put on by WRRP. The focus of this meeting will be something a little different than WRRP or these campaigners have done before – designing and running village fairs. A secondary focus of the meeting will be updating the uterine prolapse school programs already in place across Lahan.

The first day of the meeting is meant to begin at 11 am but, following traditional “nepali time”, it gets going sometime after noon. Sunita and Rakesh, the Lahan program officer, spend the afternoon discussing their ideas for the village fair  with the campaigners and getting feedback on what might or might not work in their particular villages. While the vast majority of these nepali discussions is lost to me, the campaigners are engaged and interested and Sunita and Rakesh are pleased with the day’s outcome. We all retire for a welcome night’s sleep after a healthy serving of daalbhat.

The next morning, after a cup of lemon black tea, we begin the second day of training. Today will focus on the school programs which are in place in villages across Lahan. The idea is to energize these programs through having the chidren – ages 11 to 13 – play games related to uterine prolapse. Given the generally conservative nature of nepali culture, I am surprised at how forward these programs are. The fact that graphic pictures of women with prolapsed uteruses is a normal sight to see – painted and postered on village walls, for example – highlights how much progress WRRP has made towards educating people about uterine prolapse. Related to these games, children will put together puzzles with pictures of the three stages of uterine prolapse. Other games to be played include a blind-folded version of putting the puzzle together, fi.slotzo.com games, a whisper train with terms such as ‘gender empowerment’ passed along a line in whispers, cherades (trying acting out ‘heavy workload during pregnancy’), and a trust fall.

Game day goes well and around mid-afternoon the meetings come to a close so that the campaigners can return to their villages by evening. Stay tuned to see how the village fair and school programs turn out later this week!