Educational Resource and Development Center Nepal (ERDCN)

Name : Kopila Nepali

Address: Ajirkot -5,  Ramche, Muchchok, Gorkha

Occupation: A little Agriculture and Daily wages

My name is Kopila Nepali. My house is in Ajirkot Rural Municipality, Ward No.5, Muchchok, Ramche Dalit Basti.  I was born in 2001 as the youngest child of mother Suntali Nepali and father Lal Bahadur Nepali. My parents are permanent residents of Ajirkot RM- 5, Ramche Dalit.  I have passed SEE with B grade in Shri Chaturmala Secondary School.   When I was studying in class 10, I got married at the age of 16, after that I could not continue my study and had to limit myself to this. Now I have a 3 years old son. Husband is in India for employment. I am usually busy with agricultural work, however, from agriculture I can manage food for family only for 3 months, so that I should work on daily wages too.  This is how my daily life and livelihood is going on.  It's been 2 years my in-laws are living separately. Since then only me and my little son live at home.

As I was born in a poor Dalit family, I got married at a young age.   At that time, we were living together (In laws -Mother, father, sister, brother).  My family had no knowledge about health, hygiene and nutrition.   Looking at the environment around the house, I felt ashamed of myself in front of others. When I got pregnant, I went for regular health check-ups and counseling, although I used to eat more instant noodles, junk food available in the market than homemade food.  Now health institutions give me food like eggs and nuts, but before that they didn't give me anything like that. My family didn't pay much attention; my husband was also young like myself at that time. I didn't know anything.   My son was born at health post; health post gave me Rs. 1500 for going health post for delivery.

But even after the baby’s delivery I didn’t get good care and good food. There was no provision for maternity care and food. I have spent time in a very painful and difficult situation. After some time, we started living separately from in laws.  After that, the problem got worse, my husband went to India.   I used to go to work leaving the child in the care of someone else all day. My baby could not eat mother's milk in time. There was no one to feed supplementary food to my baby, so he was underweight for his age.

One day everyone was gathered in the village and I was also in the group. We heard that a new person has also come, and he came to our village to conduct literacy classes for mothers of children under 5 years old, pregnant women and those who take care of small children. And we all happily decided to participate. I asked my husband and he advised me to read and understand what it's like, then I regularly attend nutrition literacy classes. I have learned a lot while studying. I knew a little about health and hygiene before, but I didn't even know about nutrition.  After I started participating in this nutrition literacy class, I learned things like what kind of food to eat at what time, what kind of food is needed in what situation, what should be mixed with food, and when and how often to eat, feed additional and supplementary food.  I am very happy to have the opportunity to know and learn important things such as how often a child should be fed mother's milk, what posture should be made during feeding a child, how often health check and weight should be taken, how to maintain hygiene during menstruation. I have been in school for 10 years. What I have not learned there, I have learned in nutrition literacy classes in 3 months. These days, I feed my 3-year-old child a nutritious food (grains, vegetables, legumes, fruits, fish, meat, milk, etc.),   

There are still many people in every community who do not have such knowledge even after studying like me.   If such programs are conducted in every community, it is my wish that everyone like me can learn something about health, sanitation and nutrition and save their innocent children from malnutrition and various diseases.