Further BRIDGE in Nepal
1 February 2010
Four BRIDGE workshops, each covering the Pre-Election Activities and Electoral Training modules, were conducted Nepal in November 2009.
The international lead and accrediting facilitator was Brian Latham, whose role was to support and mentor (and accredit two of) the Nepalese BRIDGE facilitators with the planning and conduct of the workshops for the Election Commission of Nepal’s seventy-five District Election Officers.
The workshop facilitators were Dhruba Prasad Dhakal, Shanta Nepal/Marasini, Surya Prasad Aryal, Shambhu Prasad Chalise and Shanti Ram Bimali. The two semi-accredited facilitators, Lok Darshan Pandit and Dilli Raj Belbase, were fully accredited at the final workshop in Mahendranagar.
It was initially planned to employ two international BRIDGE facilitators, each supervising a team of national facilitators running two week-long workshops. These were to be run concurrently. However, a second international facilitator was unable to be contracted, so the training schedule was changed at fairly late notice.
This now meant all the facilitators worked together and an extra week was scheduled to accommodate the consecutive conduct of four workshops, one in Pokhara (1-5 November), about 200 kms to the N-W of Kathmandu, two concurrently in Kathmandu itself (9-13 November) and one in Mahendranagar (16-20 November), on the Indian border in the far west of Nepal.
Pokhara is a lovely rural, trekker’s city, sitting directly underneath the magnificent Annapurna Range. The 20 participants at this workshop came from the Western Region of Nepal.
Kathmandu is busy, noisy and crowded city, a real buzz of tourists and locals. Participants here came from the Central and Eastern Regions and participated in two concurrent workshops of 20 participants each.
Mahendranagar is a rather laid-back rural border city in the far west surrounded by a rural lifestyle. 21 participants from the Mid Western and Far Western Regions attended this workshop.
All workshops were enthusiastically presented by a skilled and most committed group of national facilitators and eagerly received by a diversity of participants from all regions of the country.
