Flourishing Municipal Youth Network

Youth network at the Madi Municipal level was started through the model youth parliamentary program, where the selected youths from all wards participated in the program. Similarly, Children Women in Social Service and Human Rights (CWISH) has been carrying out environment and climate-related activities in the participation of youth from the municipal youth network of Madi municipality, Chitwan. With the engagement of youth in plantation, awareness campaign on climate change, days celebration, capacity building training, exchange visit, and seminar, youths learned that it is crucial to understand environmental and climate action. Training has widened the knowledge on environment and climate change issues, youth participation in advocating environmental rights to the government and youth action towards environmental conservation in the communities.

As the youth network is moving forward, we got the opportunity to start-up environment environment-friendly business in the support of CWISH, tdh Germany, Nepal and BMZ. Madi municipality lies in the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park, so we, 5 youth members, generated the idea on alternatives to single-use plastic bags and were involved in the production of cloth bags as an environmentally friendly business. We found that cloth bags are durable, cost-effective and reusable and hence started a business on that. We have started to sell a few numbers of products to the local community, organization and municipality, as well as exploring the new market too. Local Government has supported us by providing a space for operating the business. The main challenge for the business is found to be marketing and retaining regular purchasers. Nevertheless, the Youth Network of Madi keeps going until our vision is accomplished, as we believe that success is supposed to be challenging and exhausting.