2015 LEADers Launch the School Leadership Program

The School Leadership Program (SLP) trains and equips LEADers to adapt the to bring the tools and skills they learn — such as public speaking, youth-issues such as healthy relationships and reproductive health, and self-esteem building — and bring it to Class 9 students.

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Students listen on during the launch of Women LEAD’s School Leadership Program[/caption]

This post was written by Aparna Singh, Women LEAD’s Programs and Communications Associate.

After the intensive two-week Leadership Institute, our program participants undergo a series of trainings to conduct the four-month long School Leadership Program (SLP), which is an integral part of our core curriculum. The SLP provides our LEADers with the opportunity and challenge of passing on the knowledge and skills that they have learned from the Leadership Institute to empower younger students in their own communities.

Women LEAD believes in co-creating a future where women and men lead together at all decision making levels. As such, our School Leadership Program targets both male and female students. The program provides a unique opportunity for our participants to apply their knowledge acquired from the Leadership Institute in practicality.

For the School Leadership Program this year, 30 LEADers will be working in pairs of two and conducting the program in a total of fifteen different government and private schools.This is our sixth Annual School Leadership Program and, like every year, our LEADers will be working with grade nine students from fifteen different schools that they have selected from their community. The program requires our LEADers to lead workshops for a class of 30 students aged (14–15 years).LEADers spend about a month selecting a school and conduct the entire recruitment process themselves, from interviewing to selecting candidates for their program. Some of our schools have been our long-term partners, and we are thrilled to partner with new schools this year. We have doubled our schools from last year, maximizing our impact by reaching over 400 students this year.

Aastha, one of our program participants shared with us her experience of conducting the School Leadership Program: “I think the SLP is a two-way learning process. As the new and younger generation, the students bring new ideas into the program and we learn from them as well. We also get a chance to improve our teaching skills that teaches us to be well versed with our course curriculum. We learn event management skills and also build up our communication skills since we also have to deal with parents and teachers.”

Over the next four months, our LEADers will be spending 16 afternoons with their participants, using intensive two-hour sessions and field trips to teach them about goal setting, peer counseling, gender discrimination, and public speaking, among other topics. By the end of the School Leadership Program, Women LEAD aims to have impacted over 400 youth and empowered them to become powerful leaders and change-makers in their communities.

Women LEAD is the first and only professional and leadership development organization for young women in Nepal. Each year we select 30 girls from across the Kathmandu Valley and equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to become change-makers in their communities.