Prabritti Didi Inspires Girls to Community Service

Our Didi program has been one of the most powerful programs in increasing the scholars’ confidence and to help make their dreams into reality. To inspire our scholars, we try to bring strong female leaders to the program to interact with the girls and share their experiences. We believe that by exposing our scholars to powerful role models, it will allow them to see a different future where they are not shackled by what the society wants them to be, but are free to be what they dream to be.

Prabritti Didi was proud to be the special guest of this program.

For our latest program, we invited one of our original Didis, Prabritti to share her story with the scholars. Not only was Prabritti one of the original organizers of the Didi Program, but she also happens to be the youngest Section Officer within the Nepal Government’s Civil Service.  She and her sister, Prakriti have been working with the scholars from the beginning so many of the students were familiar with her already.

Prabritti started the program by playing a traditional song “Chhori magna jada … sarkari jagira”. The idea behind the song is how a groom should have a government job before going to ask the hand of a bride in marriage. There is prestige in working in Civil Service in Nepal due to its job security, pension and other benefits. Everyone enjoyed singing the song together, and afterwards Prabritti Didi encouraged the participants to share their thoughts on the theme of the song. After the discussion, Prabritti introduced herself as a Didi and also as an officer of the Nepal government. She explained how having a stable job with benefits is a nice part of the job, but her motivation for working in this field was so that she can help the people of her country. Prabritti Didi attended one of the best schools in the country and had opportunities to be successful in many fields, but she chose to work in the public sector because she wanted to make a difference.

The song also did not consider that it could be the girl with the government job, and being the youngest section officer currently, the scholars were very impressed with the Didi. Prabritti shared her experiences about the work that went into even getting the job, including how she passed the Civil Service examination.

Prabritti led a quiz game to get the group thinking.

In order to explain some of the things that the girls would need to know in order to get into Civil Service, Prabritti led a quiz style program where she asked general knowledge questions. The topics included topics like geography and other topics important for Civil Servants to be aware of. Besides having knowledge, Prabritti Didi stressed that to achieve something in life, we must have a goal. Even with knowledge and having a goal is not enough, one should work hard to achieve it. Prabritti Didi explained that being involved with the Didi program actually helped her to identify her goal. She mentioned about one Didi program when Snigdha Baral Didi described something called a SWOT Analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  Prabritti Did talked about how that session inspired her to do a SWOT analysis for herself. Prabritti Didi conducted a small exercise to explain a SWOT Analysis and how the scholars can do one for themselves.

The Scholars loved hearing Prabritti Didi’s stories

When asked for other advice on how she was able to become a Section Officer, Prabritti Didi added that reading lots of books and not just her textbooks was very important. Not only did it increase her knowledge, but it was also very inspiring. She mentioned one book on particular that inspired her to achieve her goals, which was “Malala”. She also emphasized to the girls that books and also newspapers are a powerful means to understand the current situation in the world. She added that we need to be aware of what is happening around us so that we can identify Opportunities and Threats as we look to achieve our goals.

After the program, we took the girls to a local “Jatra” (festival) so that we could end the day on a fun note.

Prabritti Didi was very happy to share her story of hard work, perseverance and success. The Bahinis listened with great enthusiasm and learned new skills. We closed out the program by playing some games and singing Prabritti Didi’s favorite LitClub song “Two way two way”.

Puja Pudasaini
Didi (Mentor), Rukmini Foundation