A Voice For the Voiceless
The Advocacy Project helps marginalized communities to tell their story, claim their rights and produce social change. We recruit graduate students to volunteer as Peace Fellows with partners.
The Impact of Service
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Get Involved
This campaign will seek to mobilize activists in the districts of Nepal, at the national level in Kathmandu, and internationally in the struggle to end caste discrimination in Nepal. It provides many ways for people to get involved
How you can help!
Host an Event: The AP team can help you to organize an event at your university, business, or community center
Adopt: Identify a couple who have resisted caste discrimination in Nepal
Lobby: Write a letter of support to an activist in Nepal, a local official who is behaving responsibly, or a Dalit reporter. Click here for a sample letter. It will be translated in Nepal and delivered to the intended recipient. Your letter will provide critically important evidence that the struggle against caste in Nepal is not going unnoticed.
Raise Funds: Some, though not all, of these campaigns will rely on donations. Visit our Give section.
In Nepal
JMC will follow up with several different activities aimed at protecting inter-caste marriage. These will be developed, and covered by JMC in future bulletins, and on the JMC website:
- Work with local Dalit advocacy groups to set specific goals for protecting inter-caste marriage
- Contact Dalit members in the Constituent Assembly and ask them to publicize the threat to inter-caste marriage and follow up with local officials in their constituencies. JMC and other advocacy groups are also demanding that caste be declared a crime against humanity in the new Constitution
- Bring a test case in the Nepali courts to create a legal precedent for punishing those responsible for discrimination and protect inter-caste marriages
- Identify mixed married couples who face intimidation, and publicize their cases
- Promote and support good practice by praising progressive local officials and successful experiments such as untouchability-free zones, where mixed marriages are easier.
Internationally
From Washington, The Advocacy Project will:
- Share the JMC information with Nepal and Dalit diaspora groups, with listservs, with human rights groups, with governments, in schools
- Organize events at universities, with Dalit, with experts, with visiting JMC officials.
- Encourage American and European activists to send letters of support to inter-caste couples in Nepal, as well as to local police chiefs and administrators who are supporting married couples. These letters have been requested by JMC, which will translate them and make sure they are delivered
These activities will be developed in the first months of 2009 and covered in these pages.
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