Three Carleton students have created a podcast to educate the Carleton community on the best way to assist aid efforts in Nepal and other developing nations.
The podcast, An Honest Discussion: How Western Organizations in Nepal Can Help Moving Forward, focuses on women’s equality and was created as a presentation of the research the students completed for a course taught by Carleton professor Deborah Conners on the Nepalese Approach to Women’s Rights
Podcast creators Hannah Braha, Monique McNeil and Sampavy Satkunarasa — all in their third-year at Carleton — said the podcast is a creative way to connect to their audience and showcase what they have learned.
“This isn’t a traditional ‘here’s our work’ or ‘here’s our paper,’ it’s a different [and] a creative way to showcase what we’ve learned,” Satkunarasa said.
“It’s a great way to reach people our age,” McNeil added.
Without the pandemic, the podcast may have never been produced. Dr. Conners created the course as an alternative to a hands-on experience in Nepal planned for this summer, which was cancelled due to COVID-19.
Dr. Conners said she wanted her students to understand how those in the Global North can help with women’s equality in places like Nepal. She added that she also wanted to teach about the disconnect between fundraising and organizations.
“The gap is more than just individual ignorance, it’s a gap in the way the whole process works,” Dr. Conners said.
The group of students said they focused on how Western organizations can help fix the gap moving forward, because of how westerners approach aid in the Global South.
“[Westerners] have this fixed idea about what women’s rights should look like, but you can’t apply that context to Nepal because they’re a completely different culture,” Braha said.
The group interviewed several activists from Nepal. McNeil said that through these interviews, they learned about the different forms activism can take.
“Their culture is really intertwined with their approach to helping the women there,” Braha said.
A lot of the strategies that are built for people in Nepal, by Nepalese activists, have this in mind.
“We’re just really excited because we wanted to be able to reflect on what we’ve learned, and to sort of relate to what [Nepalese] women have said,” McNeil added.
With their podcast, the group hopes to invite listeners to reflect on activism in their own countries.
“I hope more people our age learn about these issues because honestly, before this course, I did not know as many things about Nepalese women,” McNeil said.
McNeil added that understanding other people’s culture is also personal.
“My family is half Indian and half Jamaican and those are both countries that do have a lot of women’s rights issues,” McNeil said.
Satkunarasa said that the podcast can also be beneficial for western organizations to better understand the needs of the communities that they aim to help.
“Some organizations go and give each child a laptop when that might not be the number one thing they need help with,” Satkunarasa said. “Like maybe first they need electricity in their village, or maybe they need a clean water source.”
“We need to understand what their need is,” Satkunarasa added.
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.
