Celebrating Womanhood 2011
View the Celebrating Womanhood 2011 Awardees.
Celebrating Womanhood Navadevi Awards was established in 2002 by Creative Statements and is the only awards for Nepali women that recognizes and honors real life female heroes who represent all sectors of society. Celebrating Womanhood is an endeavor to honor and promote women who have risen above social and cultural practices overcoming barriers to achieve a breakthrough in their field of work.
The recipients are selected from all over Nepal on the basis of their sincerity, commitment, dedication and passion towards their work and for the positive impacts they have made. Celebrating Womanhood believes that these women are the actual forerunners of progress and empowerment, capable and deserving of representing issues of concern at national and international levels. Celebrating Womanhood further believes in progressive partnerships between men and women.
Over the past nine years 85 Nepali and 6 South Asian women have been honored with the Celebrating Womanhood recognition. In addition special mentions to 3 women and 3 men have been presented for their contribution and support to women issues. Celebrating Womanhood successfully held its seventh national and the first ever South Asian Region Recognition in October 2008.
Celebrating Womanhood is an initiative of Creative Statements committed to finding real life examples of strength and accomplishments made by women to inspire other women to aspire to do the same. Celebrating Womanhood is based on the belief that positive and possible examples are crucial to bringing about positive changes.
Creative Statements strongly believes that the key to women empowerment is highlighting and promoting examples of positive impacts and changes brought about by women in Nepal and in the South Asian Region. For far too long, the focus has been on projecting women as weak, downtrodden, violated and in need of rescue, assistance and protection. The general practice in approaching women’s issues also seems to focus more on identifying problems, creating a data base on the problems identified and advocating the need for change which is obvious.
The print and electronic media are also used to reporting more on sensation or tragedy rather than on achievements made by women. In comparison to innumerous reports and publications on the pathos of Nepali women, the contributions made and changes brought about by women are minimal in number. Real life stories elaborating how women have overcome various challenges are needed to encourage others to overcome their fear, uncertainty and unawareness. Only when women face and overcome these internal factors can we expect some real changes in the status of women.
Through Celebrating Womanhood, Creative Statements commits itself to finding real life examples of strength and presenting these examples to a wider circle. Creative Statements invites representatives from policy making and implementing bodies, socially conscious private organizations, NGOs working for women’s issues and the media to the main event to share the achievements made by the recipients and to urge the invitees to encourage, acknowledge and include the recipients and their work into their organizations to boost up the whole process of women empowerment.
It is also Creative Statement’s special area of interest to preserve and present different forms of performing arts. These aspects are always incorporated as part of the Celebrating Womanhood Awards. In the process of doing so CS has discovered and introduced deserving young talents and encouraged and recognized senior artists who somehow were lost amidst the crowd. CS also endeavors to work with artists who have the potential to understand, learn and experiment with their art forms developing it further to be utilized as a medium of sending out appropriate messages related to women and children. These performances in turn have become matters of great archival value which can be utilized as a tool of disseminating awareness.