In Nepal, our local partner, the Child Watabaran Center (CWCN), gives girls the opportunity to develop and increase their self-confidence. By offering an outreach program to girls in their communities around Kathmandu in which education, health care and personal development (sports & life skills) are central, you not only change the lives of these girls, but we structurally build self-reliant communities.
In 2017, the Nepalese top volleyball player Kopila Upreti shared her dream: to inspire and support girls in rural Nepal to build an independent future with volleyball. Together with Kopila, the Dutch Volleyball Association (Nevobo) has developed the Volleyball4life program and applied it in the communities in which CWCN is active. Empowerment is central. Strengthening communities, but also on an individual level, stimulating personal power among young people, especially girls. With the Volleyball4life program we use volleyball (the No. 1 sport in Nepal) as a tool to discover who you are, what you are good at, and how you can make a difference for yourself, your family and your community.
To give the girls in Nepal more confidence and empower them, former international and former top player Manon Flier (38) traveled to Nepal to give various volleyball training sessions as part of the Volleybal4life program. Manon still feels the pain of the girls she experienced and got to know up close. “What do you want? The stories the girls told me were harrowing.” Flier mentions clothing as an example. “It is not for nothing that women in Nepal almost always wear long trousers. If they don't, so if you show your legs, that's a license to be assaulted. In other words, you are not sure of your life as a girl.” Read the entire interview with Manon Flier via this link.
On September 24, our network has the opportunity to get to know our local heroes from Nepal, Tirtha Rasaili – founder of CWCN and Kopila Uprety – figurehead of the Volleybal4life program and former international from Nepal, during a special event 'Volleyball4life in Nepal', at the Women's Volleyball World Cup in Arnhem. Would you like to be here too? Then send us a message.