Prayatna Nepal is the self-help organization working for empowering the living condition women and girls with visually impairments. The organization is established by the composition of both women with and without visually impairments. Among the seven board members, five of them (71%) are with visually impairments where the organization is led by the totally blind women as the President. This idea of inclusion in the organizational structure is to ensure equal efforts from every individual with better understanding in improving social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of lives of women with disabilities.
The first day of fight back training was started by Ms. Sarita Lamichhane, Chairperson of Prayatna Nepal. She welcomed all the participants, trainers from the training institute "Fight Back". She also briefly introduced Prayatna Nepal and then proceeded to share objectives of the training. After that, there was an introduction round among participants, facilitators, trainers, and organizers. After the introduction session, Ms. Pooja Gurung was invited to officially start the training session with theory classes. She started the session by asking the participants about their understanding of violence. She then explained further about the types of violence and how we can identify it. She also played the video of previous trainings conducted by the institute to point out the importance of fight back training. She further talked about violence and its types and engaged the participants in discussions by asking questions. She also shared some possible ways to avoid or deal with violence. After her session, the second half of the session was carried out by Ms. Rabina Lama, physical trainer of the training institute. She started the session with warm-up exercises to gear up the participants. After a short warm up session, she gave practical demonstrations on Save Our Soul (SOS) block, a technique to save oneself from possible physical attack or violence. While practicing SOS block, the participants were also encouraged to use their voice against violence, for which they were taught to shout out loud and scream. This was a way to alert the offender by giving a message i.e., “No means No”. Similarly, the participants also learnt about palm strike which is a way to block physical attack using one’s palm.
On the second day of training, Ms. Pooja Gurung started by facilitating theory session on Good Touch and Bad Touch. She oriented the participants on the good touch and bad touch and ways to react on the bad touch by the help of different body parts. After this session, Ms. Rabina Lama started the practical session with body warm-up exercises. After the warm-up session, the participants repeated SOS block and palm strike which they learnt a day before.
On the third day, Ms. Pooja Gurung conducted a theoretical session on the fear and its management. She also described situational awareness through Jeef Cooper’s “Color Code”. According to which, there are different levels of awareness based on colors. For instance, white relates to total unawareness, yellow means a relaxed awareness, orange refers to a specific alert that has triggered full attention and red means ready to defend oneself. She further clarified to the participants on how to react during possible attacks. Then she handed over the floor to Ms. Rabina Lama, who started with some physical exercises and self-defense techniques. She also taught about ear strike and eyes poke techniques to attack the offender. She also trained the participants on using white cane as a medium to keep themselves safe during possible attacks. After this, practical session was started where the participants followed the trainers’ instructions and practiced the learnt techniques of fight back.
In the fourth day, Ms. Pooja Gurung facilitated on the types of cybercrime through the different examples. She also shared the ideas of maintaining social media safety and security. In addition, she shared the idea on ways to identify the culprit in social media and keeping oneself safe in social media. She stressed that social media is a very good platform that provides many opportunities and entertainment, but one must be aware and put their safety first in the digital world to enjoy freedom. Ms. Pooja Gurung also played and explained a video on social media safety awareness. Then, Ms. Rabina Lama took over the floor and started the practical session with warm-up exercises. After that, she made the participants repeat the techniques they learnt in the previous days. Ms. Rabina along with other assistant trainers helped the participants perfect the techniques with repeated practice. The practical session also included games, dancing and singing program as a form of refreshment amidst the training.
In the fifth day, Ms. Pooja Gurung facilitated revisions on previously taught and discussed topics by asking questions to the participants and corrected them when needed. After that, Ms. Rabina Lama took over with practical sessions. She facilitated the participants in recalling overall physical techniques they learnt and made them repeat it. Other assistant trainers also helped in mitigating confusions by showing demonstrations of the techniques to the participants. After the practical session, Ms. Sarita Lamichhane, Chairperson of Prayatna Nepal hosted certificated distribution and closing of the program. She requested participants to share their five days experiences of fight back training. After that, Ms. Pooja Gurung was also requested to give her remarks highlighting the importance of fight back training. Prayatna Nepal team and Fight Back team collectively distributed the certificates to the participants. At the end of the program, Ms. Sarita Lamichhane concluded the event by expressing gratitude to everyone involved directly and indirectly in the training program.
