The Dalit Empowerment Programme (DEP) addresses the root cause of poverty and exclusion of Dalits, which is reflected in their degree of access to and control over resources, information and participation in socio-economic and political process. Since May 2006, DEP is being implemented in five districts (Achham, Doti, Kailali, Banke and Lalitpur) of Nepal in partnership with three established Dalit national NGOs: Dalit Welfare Organization, Nepal National Dalit Social Welfare Organization and Feminist Dalit Organization. The project aims to enable around 53,000 Dalit participants (60% women) to improve their living standards and social status by:

A Dalit (“untouchable” caste) of Doti district. He runs a tailoring service for villagers.

• Engaging them in appropriate economic activities at the household and group levels • Enabling Dalit NGOs and Dalit grassroots groups to manage their organizations and development programmes • Enhancing awareness and self-esteem of Dalits through meaningful social action-literacy education and improved attitudes towards Dalits in the wider community • Resorting to effective mass awareness among Dalits and non-Dalits, and exercise of influence by Dalit institutions in the governance process

Major outputs of DEP 2007

• 502 groups are engaged in regular savings and credit schemes with 9403 members (7701 Dalits, 7992 females)
• 110 social literacy classes conducted
• 74 course of business enterprise literacy classes conducted at the community level
• 6457 people benefited from 96 small-scale irrigation and water supply schemes
• 121 events of training organized for partner staff, local facilitators and group members in different issues such as constituent assembly, gender and empowerment and advocacy lobbying skills, group capacity building and social audit
• 484 households were provided with different agricultural inputs such as goat and seed support
• 69 events of training in livelihood-related skill development such as carpentry, tailoring, vegetable farming and goat rearing organized
• 87 events of awareness campaigns (street drama, cultural show, folk song competition etc) against discrimination and gender violence conducted
• 52 episodes of weekly national radio (Dalit Jana Jagaran Radio Programme ) programme on Dalit issue broadcast

Lessons learnt

• Access to information increases access to resources. The more people are aware of their rights the more access to and control over resources they have. This year there was a significant increase in their access to resources of the Village Development Committees (VDCs).

• Internalization of right-based approach to development among staff, board members, facilitators and community as a whole leads to increase in claiming of rights.

• Presence of pressure groups at the VDC level formed at their own initiative can be a strong watchdog for any in incident of violence and discrimination.