Scholarship / Brown Fellows Program draft to pursue a leadership project [11]

the evil Dowry tradition in Nepal

Each student selected for the brown fellows program will have mentoring and financial support to pursue a leadership project developed and implemented over the course of several summers. Projects will have local, national, and/or international components. The brown fellows selection committee is interested in how you might approach planning such a project and what kind of work you might pursue. For this essay, imagine a project you might undertake as a brown fellow. For the purpose of this essay, what you can do is limited only by the scope of your imagination. Please be specific and concrete as possible, writing as if you were submitting a proposal you intend to follow. After all, you very well may! (help me edit)

Given the opportunity to pursue my own project implemented over different courses of summers, I would choose to return to the south region of Nepal to help eradicate the prevailing Dowry tradition, an evil that has distorted the sex ratio and has given rise to millions of female feticides over the decades in the country.

Dowry is often seen as a reason to consider a newly born girl more as a burden than a happiness, the reason to commemorate than to thank a mother on the birth of her new baby. The reason why that girl will spend the rest of her life doing household chores rather than getting a good education.

My inspiration to pursue this specific project arises from the point in my childhood when I had to encounter the marriage of my own cousin sister in which her family was required to donate 8 acres land, one Maruti Suzuki car, one Hero Honda motorcycle, four Sofas, a double bed, a refrigerator, a washing machine, and four sets of cell phone leaving them with nothing but a piece of land to survive on. However, this was not the end. The groom's family tortured my sister after her marriage to ask for more dowry with her family which ultimately became the only reason for the death of my uncle ( he suffered heart attack).

In order to eliminate dowry from Nepalese society, one needs to strike at the root of the problem which, I believe, is the gender discrimination. In the past, dowry must have been seen as an alternate to giving equal share of property to girl child. However, this tradition failed to update with time and, thus, invited a dozens of other painful consequences along with it such as wife battering, physical and mental assaults, sexual harassment, and bride burning.

I believe that, with the funding and mentoring support I will be receiving through the Brown fellows program, I can hit the root of the problem by educating people about the consequences of dowry problem on three levels.

Firstly, on the parts of parents they can make sure to see that their property is divided equally between their sons and daughters and no preference is given to a specific gender. I intend to aware them to invest their money in educating their daughters and make them financially independent than to save up the money for their dowry.

On the part of daughters, slogans and posters can be made depicting the serious consequences of dowry to aware them not to proceed with such wedding where there is a financial demand kept forward by the groom's family. They will be taught not to keep quite but to file complaints against the family who demand dowry so as to save the lives of other innocent families. In Nepal, not many people are aware of the equal property right law. So, I will help to aware girls about this law at a local and national level so that girls can make sure that they receive equal share of property from their parents and gender discrimination comes to an end.

On the part of sons and brothers, I intend to impart education advising them not to marry if their family members demand dowry from the bride's family. In addition, they can also check that their sisters receive equal share in the property of their parents and not promote gender discrimination.

I am the next generation, so the change must start from me. I acknowledge that this change cannot happen immediately. For change to happen, work needs to be implemented at various levels and, I believe, with Brown fellows program, the change is not much far away.