The first steps of MS' Civic Education project

Changing oneself to change others

In late March MS Nepal and its partners engaged in a three and a half day workshop to discuss what civic education is all about and how we can work with this theme in the future.

By Mohan Rai, Information assistant

29. April 2008

When the workshop ended the participants were in quite a hurry. It was already one o'clock and they had to travel for some good hours to reach home. They take their lunch hurriedly; pack their luggage and making other preparations to set off for home.  

I approach them and ask them a question or two before they depart: Prakash Uphadaya of Himrights, a young man who spoke with clarity during the workshop, sometimes even making bold comments and making his positions clear says, “I realised that the scope and content of civic education was broader then I thought. But what I also realised that it is not something that could be done only in a macro scale”. 

Hand carrying my laptop turned on, I walk one storey down and enter the room of Dhiraj Poudel of Radio Lumbini. He is packing his bag. Halting it for a while he says, “In my (radio) show, I used to raise questions issue about rights only. The workshop has inspired me to do the same about (our) duties as citizens”.  

I then approach Durga Bhandari, another participant from Women Welfare Association in Palpa to ask what the workshop meant to her. She says, “What I realised was that we should begin (civic education) with oneself and think well before we respond to something”.

And they did that quite well.

Ramesh Adhikari, MS Nepal thematic advisor on building local democracy, presented and explained about good governance, its key actors and characteristics, MS Nepal's ten strategies for building local democracy and challenges and opportunities in doing so. The legislative/regulatory framework in Nepal at the Central level, VDC level and Municipality level including the institutional planning of the local government were also explained during the workshop. The MSN intervention in the framework through the BLD theme was also clarified by the resource person.

The other resource person of the workshop Kashi Raj Dahal, a constitutional expert, made a presentation about democracy and civic education. The participants were clarified on the meaning of democracy as a process and a supreme arrangement where there is peace, equal opportunities, people’s rule, resolution of conflict and where the government is accountable to its people. The basic elements of democracy were tactfully explained supported with seemingly strange but interesting little stories and open floor discussions. The participants were also explained about the objectives of civic education and why it is important to move towards self change focusing on one’s duty towards the State rather than just demanding for one’s rights. 

Finally, the participants, in group exercises, categorized the democracy problems prevailing in their districts and what they could do about it. They took a specific problem and came up with key activities they could do, made a programme strategy for it and described expected outcome and effectiveness of the programme. For instance, the participants of Kapilvastu suggested a democracy cycle rally throughout the 15 VDCs promoting youth participation and bringing the generation closer to the ground reality.

'The workshop was an opportunity of stepping back a bit from what we arrived at in the short field visits and annual meeting presentation and also to dig deeper into the complexity of implementation with active partner participation.

But what perhaps touched the participants more than anything else was the realization that civic education was in the first place about changing oneself for better (as much as it was about changing others) and that one had to be constantly aware of the effect of one's own action for others.  

Before I leave the place I ask Ganesh Regmi president of Huron, MS Human Rights partner in Banke: ”How far are we now?”. “We got conceptual clarity. It gave us the guidelines for initiating civic education. But politics and (the status of) the peace process will also determine whether we will make it or not”, he says. “We should not do everything at once, but in stages. It is process that will take time”, adds Sanjay Lamsal of Kalika Self-Reliant Social Centre in Kapilvastu.

Some had already left. Others were leaving. It felt as if they were not setting off for home but for a journey that was longer and much more difficult than that.