Strength TogetHER 17 - Session 6

 

29th January,2022

Lokopakar in partnership with the Zonta Club of Kathmandu has been conducting virtual sessions with participants from Jumla. This is our Cohort 17. Zonta Club is a legally registered NGO that has been working on the advancement of the status of women with the objective to improve the economy, education, health and issues related to youth and violence against women.

We started our session, “Catcalling is not normal, & social media abuse” at 10 AM on 29th January, 2022. Our moderator for the day was Mrs. Ratna Karki. We started the session with our participant’s stories which they had either heard, or seen or something that had experienced before.

One of the participants mentioned, Boys tease around but whatever they say we have to be silent and we just keep quiet. If we do something back we will lose our respect.

One of our participants shared during her Grade 10 they used to go far away for tuition. The roads were round and round. Boys used to stay in the round ways and tease girls in the group. Even in class boys use rough words in front of teachers. During Grade 10, one of the girls talked back to the boys who were catcalling but it was said that the girl is not good and she is the only one creating chaos.

Another participant shared in Grade 9 she was going from her village to nearby Bazaar. At that time 4-5 boys started catcalling her. When she passed by them she said nothing and called her brother . They ran after seeing the brother.

Another participant shared when they are usually alone not in group the boys catcalls. But whenever she is catcalled she usually talks back and she scolds them.

Our other participant shared that a friend of hers was teased by a group of boys while she was going to the school and she couldn’t do anything about it, as she was scared that they might do something to her instead.

All our participants shared that they found it more comfortable to walk in a group, rather than alone. While on the topic, we also recalled our previous session’s learning i.e. to be safe before helping others, or check one’s surroundings before he/she fights back.

After discussing and hearing these stories on “Catcalling is not Normal”, our moderator Mrs. Ratna Karki also introduced Cyber crime and ways to be safe from it to our participants. We discussed about Software piracy, different types of hacking, the definition of cracking, child pornography, paravision, and harrasment.

Precautions like not sharing your social media passwords with friends, and being careful of your surroundings while using atm machines were discussed. One of the participants shared that her friend A, (Hereafter called A) had shared her facebook password with another friend B, (Hereafter called B). But, B started to use her friend A’s facebook account and started sending detrimental and immoral messages, pictures and videos to A’s friend on facebook. Our participant felt bad about it, and she, with her friend A, informed their teachers.

Another participant shared that she had got a message on viber stating that she had won a lottery. But, she ignored it because she was aware and heard about scams like that.

“My friend called to say, she had received a message with a link asking if that’s her from my account. This scared me as I had not sent any such messages.” shared our other participant. She recalls receiving a similar message from another friend and had opened the link. And says, she deactivated her account immediately as she didn’t know how to stop the messages, and started using a different account.

Our moderator informed us that the Nepal Government has laws, and rules for these kinds of activities. But, oftentimes they are either not reported or the validity date of 35 days expires while in the process of getting action against the hacker/ perpetrator. They are also making efforts to lengthen the validity days. She added that cyber crimes can’t be completely removed but it can definitely be reduced to a large extent, and requested the participants to share the information learned in the session to their friends and family. And, it’s always better to be aware about types of cyber crime, and how to safely use the internet.

Lastly, to report any cyber crimes one can visit the website of Nepal police, www.nepalpolice.gov.np.