Tag: womenshealth

be artsy: This 2023 we advance at full steam!
We are very happy to share the last news on our organization! Thanks to the contributions of our members, of donors… the girls were able to finish successfully, during these first two months of the 2023, their Rato Baltin training, by now in two different schools within the municipality of Turmakhand.

In case you don’t actually know us, we started with a very specific purpose: fighting to eradicate the extreme violence that entails the practice of the Chhaupadi, a Hindu superstition deeply rooted in the country, for girls and women in Nepal, by supplying tools, resources, information and training..

Some of you are already aware that the Rato Baltin training is a very complete program on menstrual health and empowerment for women, focused on helping young women to enjoy a better menstrual health and, at the same time, increase their confidence and self-esteem. With this training, girls and boys learn about female and male anatomy, menstrual hygiene, the use of the menstrual cups, and much more.

We are very happy to say that, especially thanks to the support of particulars, and some contribution of other NGOs, we can explain that with that support (which we still need), we have been able to do a follow-up of the users of the menstrual cups from last year, and we have received many positive comments on the impact that the menstrual cups have had in the life of these girls and women. The menstrual cups are a sustainable and affordable alternative to the conventional menstrual hygiene products, and we could continue supplying those to the women in these remote areas of Nepal.

Also, more news: we shall soon start a new school in a new municipality: Chaurpati! We try to expand our scope in order to reach more women in the area! We want to continue supplying relevant education and resources to the young women in this community. If you have any question, or you wish to have more information about our work, do not hesitate in contacting us.
So, if you want, you can continue helping us, we need as much support as possible to go ahead.
Just make a one-off donation. Become a member! Or a donor!
```
By Clara Garcia i Ortés, Josep Marín
Translation: Tere Salinero. Photos de be artsy
```
We need your help, please

-Donorbox – Choose your own currency!

Rato Baltin: https://donorbox.org/against-chhaupadi

If you want to contribute (only Spain) via Bizum:

01177. But please email us to info@beartsy.org con with your details, to deduct it in your Income Tax!
If you prefer to contribute by regular bank transfer (but again email us with your details for the deduction!):
be artsy Association: Banco Sabadell – IBAN: ES23 0081 0900 8200 0430 1934 – BIC: BSABESBB

-Associate:

https://beartsy.org/associate/

-Donate:

https://beartsy.org/donate/

-Teaming – 1 euro/month:

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

Thanks!
31/03/2023
Emergency: maintenance – subsistence of the project ‘Rato Baltin’ in Nepal

We work against the extreme discrimination suffered by many girls and women in Nepal. We can talk about extreme violence, too. We also educate their communities, also boys and men. Our projects – with Rato Baltin, as the principal – has its continuity in danger. We need you to continue.

We have educated, protected and feed more than 43,000 people – most of them women and girls – since 2017. We have been educating and empowering women and girls in Nepal for more than 6 years. Will you help us continue? That is why we launched this urgent need for help to be able to continue with the project. We share the link to Migranodearena -crowdfunding, from €5 to…- that we need to be able to continue with the project.

Please help us to ensure the continuity of the project in Nepal from January 2023.

With your support, the project will not have to close and the network and the work done in these almost 7 years will not be lost.

Please donate now and continue to help women in remote western Nepal. Thank you very much!

We need your help, please

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

-Donate: – https://beartsy.org/donate/

-Migranodearena Foundation

RatoBaltin: https://www.migranodearena.org/en/cause/emergencia-mantenimiento-proyecto-rato-baltin-en-nepal-

-Teaming – 1 euro/month:

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox – Choose your own currency!

RatoBaltin: https://donorbox.org/against-chhaupadi

Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!

18/11/2022
News about our staff: Kamala Bhandari, mentor and new Achham Team Manager

We spoke with Kamala, one of the first girls to attend our workshops in Mangalsen. Namaste, Kamala. After some time in which, for organizational reasons, we did not update our website with new reports and news, we love to resume the news section with this interview. Kamala is a mentor, and the new Achham Team Manager.

Kamala, can you tell me a little about your life?

Namaste, my name is Kamala Bhandari, I live in Mangalsen Municipality 6, Tesinge. There are 6 people in the family. I am working in the Rato Baltin Project because since my childhood I have wanted to eradicate the misconducts and superstitions of the society.

Kamala, what was your life like before participating in the Rato Baltin Project?

Before working in the project, I didn’t know anything about menstrual health management, I had never spoken about it in front of anyone, and I was unaware about the outside environment, other than my own.

What was your emotional state before starting the Project?

Before starting the project, my emotional state was very weak, I was ignorant, I didn’t know anything about menstrual health management since I participate in some training related to that.

Kamala, now that you are part of the Project, what is your life like? Has your gaze changed towards your future?

My life has changed a lot since I am part of the project. This project has been able to bring lots of changes in me and in my community. Yes, my gaze has changed towards my future, before I knew nothing about life, and now I have more knowledge. I can work on this project and change my society, the village and my future.

And now we ask Clara, co-founder and director of the Project: What surprised you the most about Kamala since she joined the Project?

Although Kamala appears in the image we used to present the 2019 project, from the first row of girls, I knew well only Manisha. I met Kamala during the ToT (we name like this some activities of the project) and especially the day we told the mentors who were training, if any of them wanted to continue studying and their family could not afford it, and they had already told them that they could not do it, they should contact us. We will study their cases. He came to ask for the scholarship, crying. Since she started in the Turmakhand group she has grown as an independent person. She went from being an insecure girl, to being a girl who filled the room with her presence. Kamala is fun, sensitive, hard-working and full of love and respect for others.

Kamala is the second girl, left. The one picture in our flyers.

©eleonora bordogni.

We can see positive changes.

Mentor Kamala and trainer, teaching about changes in puberty.

Kamala, photography mentor- ©eleonora bordogni.

We need your help, please

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

-Donate: – https://beartsy.org/donate/

-Teaming – 1 euro/month:

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox – Choose your own currency!

RatoBaltin: https://donorbox.org/against-chhaupadi

Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!

29/06/2022
be artsy 2022: more than €18,000 in collaborative financing and support for Oxygen for Nepal to fight against Covid
The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic plunged Nepal into a deadly health crisis. Existent health infrastructures were insufficient to cater to the increasing number of infections, and many patients were turned down from hospital treatment. Demands for essential medical
equipment and infrastructures such as oxygen cylinders, hospital beds, ventilators along with safety gear could not be met due to their lack of availability. This supply-demand gap created a massive health catastrophe and led to many avoidable deaths.

After the fact that in 2020 the main project of be artsy, Rato Baltin (Red Bucket), had to be left in a kind of stand-by (although our local mentors did continue working, and we kept in touch with the people and associates in Nepal and in the area of Achham) because of the start of the pandemics, in 2021, in February, we started with renewed energies. For example, we started the Happy Women Training Centre for widows and disadvantaged women, in agreement with the village of Mangalsen. We supplied cloth to sew face masks, we also purchased and distributed them. But the second wave of the Covid-19 did strike the country quite strongly.

It was at that moment when the collaborative financing Oxygen for Nepal came to be, the one we are introducing to you in this report

Thanks to individual donors, and the economic and supportive contributions of the NGOs “Amics del Nepal”, “Petit Món”, “Camina Nepal” and some more, we made €18,000
for this task, which we detail in the report. After this impasse, and the financial contribution applied as per the objectives of this specific project, our projects Rato Baltin, Edufem, Happy Women (the Achham women made more than 10,000 masks, more than 200 reusable sanitary
pads and 1,900 bags for menstrual cups), the Mask Up Campaign in Kathmandu donating natural cotton masks to elderly people homes and orphanages in collaboration with Nature Craft, the donation of Ruby Cup menstrual cups to female nurses and doctors that were working against the pandemic, all have continued.

Our evaluation of the whole set of projects of be artsy 2021 has come up with 11,812 (direct) beneficiaries. But let’s see in detail what has the Oxygen for Nepal project meant.
```
Translation by Tere Salinero. Photos by Creasion Nepal & beartsy
```
We need your help, please

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

-Donate: – https://beartsy.org/donate/

-Teaming – 1 euro/month:

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox – Choose your own currency!

RatoBaltin: https://donorbox.org/against-chhaupadi

Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!
27/02/2022
Thanks to Rotary Club Barcelona Millennium, we were able to purchase necessary materials for the Rato Baltin Project
Contributions make a difference. The philanthropic organization Rotary Club Barcelona Millennium has given us resources – € 600 – to support our main project, Rato Baltin, and fight against Chhaupadi, a practice banned since some years by the government of Nepal. But it still persists in the country, especially in rural and remote areas such as the west, in the Achham district. All funds go toward our efforts to secure the basic rights of girls and women in western Nepal, where we have been working since 2017 on the ground to eliminate the inhumane practice of Chhhaupadi that is subjected to women when they have their periods.

We have more and better materials for the menstrual and sexual education workshops for girls, women, and training in the use of the menstrual cup now. A menstrual cup is a sustainable tool that helps girls and women feel clean and safe, as Chhaupadi, rooted in Nepal, causes them to believe that they are impure. We also do workshops for boys and men, as in order for the stigma to change, the entire community must better understand what menstruation is.

Here are some photographs that further show our gratitude to Rotary Club Barcelona Millennium for believing in the project and contributing. Thank you!
```
Translation by Clara G.O. with annotations by Shruti Gautam
```
We need your help, please.

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

–2021 crowdfunding: https://www.migranodearena.org/en/cause/fighting-chhaupadi-the-taboo-that-is-leading-to-the-deaths-of-young-girls-

-Teaming – 1 euro/month:

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox – Choose your own currency!

RatoBaltin: https://donorbox.org/againts-chhaupadi

Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!
06/08/2021
Collaboration Makes a Difference: MacEwan University
The experience related to the collaborative workshops developed with MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, has been rewarding for each of us. Through the Riipen platform, we unite around our academic and practical interests in defending the rights of children and women in Nepal.

Nursing students from the Community Mental Health: High Priority Population class have contributed and continue supporting be artsy. We want to thank all those students, but especially Taylor Wilson and Hannah Wildeman for the crowdfunding implemented for be artsy which obtained CAD 500 (EUR 332.80) for the Rato Baltin Project. Likewise, we want to express our gratitude to Professor Rita Dhungel, in charge of the Social Work course at the same University, who, with her students, included the participation of be artsy in events for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, last November.

Therefore, apart from with the fundraising, the students have contributed to spreading the predicament of women related to extreme discrimination just because they are women and being considered unclean when they have their menstruation. In addition to reflecting on possible implementation solutions based on menstrual, sexual, health, and sustainability education. Plus free participation. Proposals that have gained recognition not only in Nepal but also in other countries, but on which we must continue working. In 2020, where we have all been affected in various ways, primarily about health issues, we started at the end of the year with the 2021 project, which has continued to advance with care but strong.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by be artsy NGO 🇳🇵 (@ngobeartsy)

Going back to the main issue, the MacEwan University has contributed in ways that, as happens with all positive actions, have been crucial. The students, with some computer graphics in both English and Nepali, have helped the project, apart from with the fundraising, by providing an outreach tool for girls and women as well as for the communities.
```
Translation by Liliana Gonzalez and Tere Salinero
```
We need your help, please.

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

–2021 crowdfunding: https://www.migranodearena.org/en/cause/fighting-chhaupadi-the-taboo-that-is-leading-to-the-deaths-of-young-girls-

-Teaming – 1 euro/month:

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox – Choose your own currency!

RatoBaltin: https://donorbox.org/againts-chhaupadi

Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!
01/07/2021
We still need collaboration to continue ahead with the EDUFEM 2021 project. Below the detail of what has happened during 2019 and 2020

According to UNICEF, Nepal has got the third-highest ratio of child marriage in Asia

Although child marriage is illegal in this country since 1963, this practice is very common in remote villages. The minimum legal age to be married is 20, but in these remote areas there is still a majority of teenagers getting married at between 15 and 19 years. The reasons for child marriages in Nepal are complex. Poverty, the low value granted to female offspring and the lack of access to education are factors that contribute, when at the same time the caste system and the patriarchal culture also play an important role. It seems that with each passing day more teenagers are able to choose their partners and can even run away. In some cases, fathers and mothers encourage their sons or daughters to initiate their own marriage in order to avoid the high costs related to the dowry or the wedding. They can also choose to run away, as the sexual expression outside wedlock is not acceptable, to avoid a forced or arranged marriage, or just to flee from the difficulties at home.

This is the report of the years 2019 and 2020 of a project that still needs a last effort to keep on going

Our objective is to find more sponsors that are ready to participate in the program, in order for us to offer more opportunities to girls and young women to continue with their studies. The more donors we have, the more opportunities we can give our students. University can be very expensive and even unaffordable, and the girls who are ready to keep on with their studies will need to cope with those expenses. The challenges we are facing in the implementation of the project 2020 were due to the Covid-19 pandemics. The girls took their school exams late, because in April, which is when in principle should have taken place, there was a strict confinement. Even in this exceptional situation and having confronted them later, the girls passed all their exams. However, some of them decided not to pursue B. A. degrees.

Can we succeed in them deciding by themselves, without feeling coerced by external factors?

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

–Migranodearena: https://www.migranodearena.org/en/cause/fighting-chhaupadi-the-taboo-that-is-leading-to-the-deaths-of-young-girls-

-Teaming (1 euro/month):

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox:
https://donorbox.org/againts-chhaupadi
https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!

16/05/2021
We have the be artsy Activity Report 2020!
It will be of interest to you. And it will be surprising. We have started working on the project Rato Baltin 2021 and other projects this year, and finally we closed the activity report that we carried out in 2020, the year in which the main risk was the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide and in Far West Nepal. This has made travelling impossible (for international volunteers and local partners in Kathmandu).

Because of the lockdown measures, schools were closed from March to mid-November. During the first week of December the schools closed again. Due to the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and current public health restrictions, it has been impossible for local partners to monitor the project on the spot; we had to let the girls and the local government do it. We managed that 2 of our coordinators and 1 trainer helped with the monitoring, but we had to believe that the local NGO would do the work according to our vision, expectations, methodology and values.

The project could only be implemented with the authorization and coordination of the local government. The risk was that local government employees would not follow the correct guidelines during the implementation of the project. Obtaining stable funds for our projects is the greatest difficulty we face. The project is working very well, but it is not cheap.

In 2021, we will do the project Rato Baltin + Masks 4 health before reaching each town, to protect our trainers and mentors and the locals who come to our workshops. We are trying to get a donation of menstrual cups to provide all the women who want to use them. Besides, in collaboration with Dr. Yap from the WTO (World Toilet Organization) we will open a social enterprise in Achham, Nepal, to try to help women earn money. We are now carrying out a study on the natural materials that we can find, what projects can be included in the initiative. But surely it will be along the lines of sanitary napkins, masks, candles, soap … The initiative is aimed to help widows, young women who could not finish their studies and low caste women to have a regular income that gives dignity to their lives.

During 2020, we hired a project manager, two coordinators, three trainers and six mentors in Achham. As staff of the project Rato Baltin, they earn a salary that makes them more financially independent. This experience will make them leaders in their community and will allow them to develop new skills that they can use in the future. In the emergency project we also hired several women to make masks.

We finished the year 2020 with 61 partners, but we need more! Have a look at the Activity Report 2020, you will surely find it interesting.

Join us!
```
Translation by Sari Manota
```
We need your help, please.

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

–2021 crowdfunding: https://www.migranodearena.org/en/cause/fighting-chhaupadi-the-taboo-that-is-leading-to-the-deaths-of-young-girls-

-Teaming – 1 euro/month:

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox – Choose your own currency!

RatoBaltin: https://donorbox.org/againts-chhaupadi

Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!
12/04/2021
Impact of the 2020 project: we have keep on working despite the Covid-19

The challenges we faced while implementing the project in 2020 were due to the Covid-19, but despite the constraints, our local trainers have shown their motivation and willingness to keep working to bring changes in their community.

You can read the details of the evaluation of the 2020 Rato Baltin Project, the focus, the results, the budget evaluation, the data sources and the methodology in this document.

This year 2020 we have managed to maintain the presence of our team in the fields despite the sanitary measures due to Covid-19. Thanks to the goodwill of the trainers, the follow-up of the project went well, and we were able to implement some workshops. We have seen the need to design a workshop component aimed at boys, too, in order to holistically disseminate MHM knowledge and sex education.

We will pursue the implementation of a group workshop for school boys to be delivered in 2021. In every village, we also plan to organize talks with representatives of the municipalities as well as spiritual and religious leaders. Next year, the project is not going to be expanded to a lot of other villages. Instead, we will focus on having people working in the field during the whole year. We will try to reach more women and help them to stop Chhaupadi by assisting and encouraging them with the help of the mentors and training visits.

Our plan is to have a staff made up entirely of Achham girls. We will employ at least 2 girls from each village to work as social mobilizers and assist the trainer once per month throughout the whole year. We have been working to establish a strong mentor team in Achham, that can help in the future years of the project. This year we have been working with the new social enterprise Be Artsy Nepal as a counterpart, and because they were already working in 2019 as individual volunteers in the project, so things run smoothly and easily. They could get approval with SWC and implement the local girls in Achham, and we can trust that they will work with us in the long run.

In addition to that, we will continue to have Achham girls conduct the workshops on the field, and they will become team managers in the future. By means of these measures, the project can be managed more efficiently, and we will be able to count on the trainers in each municipality, who will take care of their menstrual cup users and foster Chhaupadi awareness year-round.

We need your help, please.

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

–Migranodearena: https://www.migranodearena.org/en/cause/fighting-chhaupadi-the-taboo-that-is-leading-to-the-deaths-of-young-girls-

-Teaming (1 euro/month):

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox:
https://donorbox.org/againts-chhaupadi
https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!

09/04/2021
What have we done in Accham to protect, and protect ourselves, against Covid-19?
In response to the consequences of the spread of the SARS-COV-2 infection, in early 2020, we initiated projects to distribute reusable masks, soap and information, and food for vulnerable women. We explain how it went.

The first case of Covid-19 took place in the Chinese province of Hubei, in December 2019. In Nepal, the first reported case was on January 23, 2020, by a Nepalese man who was returning from Wuhan. The patient recovered satisfactorily and his contacts came out asymptomatic. Nepal’s risk from the Covid-19 outbreak is high, according to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention of the United States, due to the borders with China and India with low health security and high entry rate. The government deployed its limited means. The situation meant that, by working on the field with the Rato Baltin project, we helped in the fight against Covid-19. Concerned for the remote villages of Accham, where the Rato Baltin project has been taking place in recent years, and especially by local staff and project beneficiaries, with whom we regularly share close contact with, tools were needed in order to prevent the spread of the virus. Masks for Health has promoted the realization of reusable masks, the creation of jobs for local women, and the distribution of soap to guarantee a high level of hygiene, and raise awareness about the virus and how to manage it.

Based on the work of the Achham community

We have done this together with local health volunteers like JCI – Achham and representatives of the local governments. Also, the representatives of the municipalities of Janalibandali, Basti and Kalagaun had asked for our help in relation to the provision of food for people that were in a more vulnerable situation. We decided to focus on households with widows and children who had no access to a place to eat and no economic resources for closure and confinement measurements: the Food for Need project was done in parallel and related to prevention activities. With the local organization JCI- Achham, our local staff and the support of local policy representatives, we have been able to carry out these actions and collected the qualitative and quantitative impact. 800 people- mainly widows with children- have benefited from the food distributed like rice, lentils, oil, salt, and sugar.

Due to the exceptional crisis situation that we are living in due to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, it has not been possible to implement the Rato Baltin project as we had expected. But we have been able to bring our help to the most remote villages of the Achham district through the Mask for Health and Food for Need projects. As an organization, we think that by developing these projects we have shown the ability to act quickly in times of health and economic crisis, use the resources – human, logistical, material- generated from the trust built and deposited over these last few years from the work of the Achham community in promoting the rights of women and girls.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed through Migranodearena and everyone who supports us. All you have worked on that too!

You can read our report, in this link.
```
Translation by Estefania Fernandez
```
We need your help, please.

-Associate: – https://beartsy.org/associate /

–Migranodearena: https://www.migranodearena.org/en/cause/fighting-chhaupadi-the-taboo-that-is-leading-to-the-deaths-of-young-girls-

-Teaming (1 euro/month):

RatoBaltin: https://www.teaming.net/ratobaltinproject
Edufem to prevent early marriage: https://www.teaming.net/edufemproject

-Donorbox:
https://donorbox.org/againts-chhaupadi
https://donorbox.org/edufem

Thanks!
23/03/2021

Thank you to WPML for supporting NGOs