On 25th January 2019, an interaction program was held with the stakeholders on SDGs and Girls Empowerment was conducted by JCYCN with the support of KANALLAN. This was a second phase program following the first phase of the program on 3rd June 2018. The chief guest of the program was the Mayor of Devchuli Municipality, Mr. Purna Kumar Shrestha. The program was conducted in Daldale, Devchuli, where Mr. Noor Jung Shah, Technical Advisor for the Girls Empowerment Project, was the facilitator. There was participation from over 40 elected representatives from municipal to ward level.
The program started with opening remarks from the president of JCYCN Mr. Tilottam Paudel. After which, Mr. Noor Jung Shah officially started the session with a brief summary of the previous session conducted earlier in July. He highlighted the Sustainable Development Goals and explained it in context to Nepal, with the reference to Nepal Sustainable Development Goals; Status and Roadmap 2016-2030 (National Planning Commission) and how each could be linked to Girls and Girls Empowerment.
He followed by Summarizing the previous session. Some participants also recounted the interaction they had had in the previous meeting. Mr. Noor Jung Shah, after that, went on to analyze the budget of Devchuli Municipality for the year 2075/76. He presented the budget of the municipality and through a PowerPoint presentation, discussed it in accordance with the sustainable development goals. He analyzed each budget allocation and presented which Sustainable development it correlated to. He then presented the percent of budget allocated in each Sustainable development goal and resonated that with Girls Empowerment; how each heading will help in the empowerment of young girls.
The participants had a lot of queries in regards to the contextualizing and localizing SDGs Goals and Targets. Mr. Shah helped them understand that SDGs were not a new concept, but something that already fits the narrative of the development work that we have been doing and instead, SDGs only helped categorize and visualize the developmental work. Localization of SDGs did not need an entirely new approach to drafting budgets, but implementing it would only help to figure out where our priorities lied and then prioritize accordingly. After answering the queries from the elected representatives, the program ended. Some elected representatives, especially female elected representatives, requested the organizers for similar programs so that they could also their capacity to be well equipped to work for Girls Empowerment with an effective approach.