Prayatna Nepal is the self-help organization, which is working continuously to empower the living condition of women and girls with visual impairment. The organization is established by the group of both women with and without visual impairment. Among the seven board members, five (71%) are with visual impairment, including the chairperson. The idea of inclusion of women with and without disabilities in the organization is to make equal efforts from every individual with better understanding to improve the social, cultural, economic, environmental and political life of women with visual impairment.
With the aim to reduce the fingerprint and enable signature writing, Prayatna Nepal organized 3 days signature technique training for 14 blind girls and women at Pokhara. The objective of the training was to sensitize blind women on the structure of sighted alphabet and develop their own signature. Ms. Sarita Lamichhane, Chairperson of Prayatna Nepal facilitated the opening session of training. She welcomed all the participants and highlighted the objectives of the training along with the introduction of Prayatna Nepal, for which the impact video of Prayatna Nepal was played. She then requested all the participants and representatives from Prayatna Nepal and facilitators to introduce themselves. During introduction session, participants shared their expectation of training. Along with their introduction, the participants reflected upon their own experience and challenges of not being able to do their signature. They also shared that they use fingerprint in banking and other documents where they need to do their signature. After this, Ms. Sarita handed over the floor to the facilitator of the training, Ms. Sabita Lamichhane, who made the participants note down the alphabet’s formula in braille. The training began by participants practicing alphabets using individual slates with stylus on a braille paper. Ms. Sabita and Ms. Srijana Pariyar (a visually impaired assistant facilitator) guided the participants to learn the formulas of the alphabets. Prayatna Nepal team also assisted the facilitators in guiding the participants as learning the formulas and working accordingly requires individual attention. After the participants were confident about writing alphabets A to Z, the facilitators guided them to write letters with a pen using the slate board. In this way, the first day of the training came to an end with the participants feeling relatively confident in following the formulae and independently writing the alphabet A to Z using slate board and pen.
After learning to write using pen by a slate board on the first day, they were given signature guide to practice writing their names on a paper on the second day. A signature guide is a wooden square with a small writing space that enabled the participants to write in straight line without using slate board. some participants required constant guidance and supervision while some were able to perform more independently with minimal support. They were given constant instructions and supervision, which finally helped them be able to write their names independently with and without slate and signature guides. Some participants were able to write their full names by the end of the second day while some chose to write their first names only. Facilitators and volunteers tried to encourage the participants to make their signature uniform, consisting of at least three to four letters. However, there were few participants who felt more confident in writing the initials of their names. As per their individual confidence and ability, they were supported and guided accordingly. The third day was focused only on repetitive practice where the participants practiced their signatures with minimal support from the facilitators.
Hence, at the end of the third day, all the participants were able to develop their individual signatures. Then, Ms. Sarita proceeded to close the training. For this, she initially took feedback from each participant. The participants expressed their gratitude towards Prayatna Nepal team and also suggested to provide the further refresher trainings to eradicate the fingerprint completely. Additionally, she thanked the participants for their enthusiastic and positive learning attitude towards the training. Finally, she ended her note by encouraging everyone to continue their practice for better learning outcomes. She also mentioned that practicing what they learnt is the key to eradicate fingerprint completely.
