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The Women’s Skills Development Project was established and registered with His Majesty’s Government in 1975, which was declared international women’s year by the United Nations. It started off as a government funded training centre, under the same name it has today, where local women would come and learn how to weave, cut and sew textile. The Women’s Skills Development Project was created with the aim of helping the neediest, and giving skills to poor and illiterate women. After 1989, when democracy was introduced, the project began to decline as the government was no longer able to continue funding. Many women were unable to find work until one of the employees, Ramkali Khadka, saw the potential of the project and took action. She began by collecting investment from her family and the community. With just 10,000 Nepalese Rupees Ramkali Khadka and three colleagues, Shanti Thapa, Lalu Gurung and Surya Panday, began to commercially produce handicraft, and the WSDP gradually transformed into a self-sufficient and successful NGO.
The Women’s Skills Development Project has always manufactured bags, although at the very beginning they were quite old-fashioned and made simply with cream coloured natural cotton. Shanti, Lalu and Surya attended material dying and quality control training in Kathmandu. The colour black was introduced into their weaving shortly afterwards and eventually the WSDP were able to introduce different colours.
In the early 1990’s when the WSDP was still getting started and counted only 16 employees- as opposed to over 200 today- the organisation benefited from the help of their first VSO volunteer, from the UK. She stayed for two years and was in charge of marketing. She brought the bags to popular areas of Pokhara, and they sold well with western tourists. In 1994 there was a second VSO volunteer who worked on new designs and created the ‘baby bag’, the best selling WSDP product to this day. From then on Ramkali and her employees continued to create new designs and different colour combinations.
In 1995, the WSDP became registered as a local Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), and also became part of Fair Trade Group Nepal. This meant that the WSDP were now being promoted on behalf of the Fair Trade organisation. Since 1996, their sales and turnover have been increasing steadily. In 2002 two new long-term volunteers joined the project, one Japanese volunteer from the JICA organisation who is in charge of design, and a volunteer from the American Peace Corps who has helped restructure the business side of the WSDP. Both have had an impact worth mentioning, and the NGO continues to flourish and grow. Some short-term volunteers have also contributed to the project in smaller ways. In March 2003, the Women’s Skills Development Project became part of the International Federation for Alternative Trade (IFAT), and thanks to the fairs and exhibitions they attend throughout Nepal, they were able to make new contacts and expand their market. The Women’s Skills Development Project’s market has expanded to Europe, as well as Japan and the United States.
The WSDP has always aimed to employ women who are most in need. Certain criteria were established from the very start, and the primary objective of the organization is still to provide handicraft-related skills training to poor, unfortunate Nepalese women so that they may become self-supportive. The women being trained at the Women’s Skills Development Project come from a variety of social, economic and ethnic backgrounds. Many of them come from rural villages and are widowed, divorced, disabled or abused; some have been cast out from their homes and villages. After arriving at the WSDP, they are provided training in the following disciplines: material cutting, sewing, weaving, dying, business management and various other skills related to handicraft production. There have also been some classes in health awareness and English language, all freely provided by local and foreign volunteers.
Thanks to years of hard work and dedication to their craft, the Women’s Skills development project has been able to provide hundreds of women with the vocational skills necessary to become self-reliant. It is one of the few women’s organisations in the region, and is looked upon as an example of a successful NGO.
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