PIIP Patna, Bihar

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PIIP Patna, Bihar

• Program Overview
• Womens Political Empowerment and Leadership
  (WPEL)

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WPEL

• envisages proactive and effective participation
  of politically empowered women leaders within
  their panchayats and municipalities.

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WPEL

• Women leaders will strategically use information
  and knowledge, act upon their concerns, organize
  and make demands upon panchayats and
  municipalities to change and/or influence
  policies and practices that affect the lives of
  women particularly the disadvantaged women

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WPEL

• Unfortunately, the WPEL workshop was not running
  while we were in Bihar
• However, we met with several women elected
  representatives (WERs) from a variety of
  backgrounds
• We met with three WERs from the Nawada District

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WER Nawada District

• We met with one very empowered woman who had
  overcome great adversity to be a WER has been
  elected for the past 2 elections in unreserved
  seats
• She was married when she was 12 years old to a 45
  year old, was widowed at a young age and has one
  son
• She feels she keeps getting voted back in because
  people feel she is harmless and low-ranked in
  society, so they feel like she can understand
  their pains and problems

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Issues

• Womens issues were similar across districts and
  socio-economic status of WERs
• Education, sanitation, domestic violence,
  vocational training

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PRIAs Role in WPEL

• The purpose of PRIAs role in the program
• Assess education needs of WERs
• Develop core curriculum for political empowerment
• Train adult educators
• Facilitate participation of women
• Support to women in leadership roles
• Gender sensitization
• Document the process of education for political
  empowerment

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Suggestions for Stage 3 workshops

• Education about corruption
• More information needs to be given about the
  types of programs (for funding) WERs have access
  too

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Personal Learning and Challenges

• Patience is a virtue
• Lots about Indian culture, society and family
  life
• Isolation and loss of independence
• Patience
• Difficult to find applications to Australian
  policy challenges

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