Bright Star Society has been conducting various proactive programs, campaigns and initiatives to empower the marginalized, economically-disadvantaged and under-privileged youth, persons with disabilities, children and women enabling them to live a dignified, comfortable and independent life. In our each participatory program, we give high space to persons with disabilities. From the advent of it’s establishment, we have been introducing new and pragmatic programs and campaigns. Let’s take a tour to our different initiatives at a glance:
Disability-Awareness and Empowerment Program (DAEP)
This program covers two dimensions:
- people with disabilities,
- People without disabilities.
This program aims at empowering persons with disabilities through:
- Life skills training such as training on independent-living, various trainings on capacity-building, leadership development and career enhancement,
- Socialization, integration and interaction of persons with disabilities in inclusive world to bridge the gap with their non-disabled counterparts,
- Disability rights activism to bring persons with disabilities in the main-stream of development,
- Endorsement and orientation of Disability rights which includes, disability-rights and sexuality, reproductive rights, right to information, right to privacy and right to be independent and self-reliant.
- Orientation and sensitization on local laws and global practice regarding disability rights including United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
- Need-based support for students and adults with disabilities such as assistive and adaptive appliances like white canes, wheelchairs, chrutches, special software and hardwares ETC.
As for the people who are not living with disabilities, we focus our programs on:
- Educating non-disabled people to understand the world of disability as well as various disability-related rights and issues and helping them endorse better accessibility, inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities in their community-based or organizational affairs,
- Spreading awareness on youth inclusion, accessibility, and the spirit of universal design,
- Organizing interaction in school, college and university level to help students understand the real meaning of disability and promote the spirit of volunteerism in creating better and barrier-free environment for persons with disabilities.
Entrepreneurship Development Program (EDP)
Under this program we provide:
Livelihood options for economically-disadvantaged individuals and groups in which we provide seed fundings, initial investment and pre-requisites to get started the ventures in making them more independent.
Health-Awareness Program (HAP)
Since the advent of Bright Star Society, we have placed “health” in our special space. To raise level of awareness on health and it’s underlying issues, we carry out following programs and activities:
- Free Health Camps:
- We conduct regular free-medical camps and free medicines distribution in different communities. Colaborating with Sechine clinic, so far, we have conducted hundreds+ camps in various locations including Kathmandu valley, Kabre, Sindhupalchok and Dhading districts.
- Orientation and interaction with doctors
- Mental Health and Psycho-social Counselling
- Blindness prevention wareness program
- Spreading awareness on eye-donation
- Blood Donors Volunteers
Community Outreach Program (COP)
The team of Bright Star Society is the diverse individuals who holds their professions in their own professional works, but we save up not only our money, but also we save our holidays, and visit different communities and conduct the short-term trainings like:
- Leadership and Personality-development Training,
- Radio Anchoring and Journalism training,
- Motavation, behavior change and effective communication training.
- ICT and Technology,
- Public Speaking and performing arts
These trainings are offered to community people, especially to rising youth leaders, students and those who would like to take their skills in the next level of development. We collaborate with local youth clubs, schools or community-based organizations to reach, select the trainees and offer the trainings on their demands. If you would like to have the above-stated trainings in your own local communities to help youth amplify their personal and professional growth, please (link) invite us for Training.
Motivation and volunteerism
We believe and promote the concept of “Inclusive volunteerism” in Nepal, matching youth volunteers to write the exams for blind and visually-impaired students, finding volunteers for reading and recording the audio books and different activities of persons with special needs, we function as the mediator between volunteers and service-seekers.
We believe in everybody can be volunteer and can serve and contribute for the nation unconditionally. For achieving these we conduct the activities like:
- Organizing the motivational speech, talk shows and sharing programs on spirit of volunteerism and social works and motivating youth to engage in social services to help the people in need.
- Organizing training and workshops on Behaviour-change Communication, creative thinking, critical approach for problem-solving, and so on.
Post-earthquake relief, recovery, rehabilitation
This program has been an addition to the works of BSS after the devastating earthquake of April 2015. Following the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April 2015 and the powerful subsequent aftershocks, initially, the team of Bright Star Society and youth volunteers reached the earthquake-affected grounds and started the post-earthquake support programs.
In first phase, we carried out relief works, under which we distributed food, clothes, medicines, mosquito-nets, sanitation kits to the victims putting the victims with disabilities at high priority. In the second phase, we collaborated with like-minded organizations and started helping victims with temporary shelters continuing the remaining relief works. So far, we constructed more than 200 temporary shelters for the families with disabilities and donated solar lights, blankets, bed-nets, bed-covers, kitchenwares and other seasonale items and belongings to make their lives easier to live in the newly-created circumstances. In the same phase, we found that when the buildings collapsed in earthquake, those who got trapped in rubble, happened to lose feet, arms and some we found with visual-impairements due to head-injuries and facial disfigurements. Although many cases were of spinal injuries, we started those people who happened to be physically-challenged with assistive and adaptive appliances such as white canes for visually-impaired, chrutches, elbow-sticks and wheelchairs for physically-challenged as per their nature of disabilities and needs.
Now, in the third phase, we came up with the idea of promoting entrepreneurship among victims. Since earthquake made people massively dependent, our current goal is to help them become independent through entrepreneurship development. We have been supporting different people in different areas with little seed-fundings to get started people with their small-scale business and entrepreneurial quest.
For the detailed information regarding this program, we ask you to see (link) post-earthquake highlights and learn more about our post-earthquake relief works, and check out (link) success Stories to tap into the stories of our beneficiaries.
Media and Technology promotion
We consider media and technology as the means of creating a difference in societies as they are the windows to disseminate the flow of information, persuasion, education and socialization. We carry out following programs under this catefory:
- Training on radio-anchoring and journalism,
- Radio program and TV program production and dissemination to spread and raise the awareness on disability rights and issues, issues of youth and different segments of society.
- Regular fairs and exhibition of assistive and adaptive technologies, screen-reading applications, web-accessibility and so on.
- Information Technology (IT) promotion, ICT training and short-term media and technology campaigning.
Especial Programs for Visually-impaired
We conduct regular programs to empower blind and visually-impaired to help them achieve their personal and professional goals. Most of our board-members are visually-impaired, so we prioritize and see the greater importance in development, leadership enhancement and capacity-building of blind and visually-impaired to minimize the barriers and to open the doors of inclusive societies for all. Therefore, we empower visually-impaired by following especial programs:
- Mobility Orientation:
We, time to time, offer training to teach blind and visually-impaired how to walk with cane, how to navigate safe in the city and beyond.
2. ICT training,:
We provide various ICT training to visually-impaired students and adults to sharpen their skills in using up-to-date advanced technologies, in which computer basic training, ICT-refreshment training, scanning and reading trainings are offered.
Not only that, we organize the orientation, experience-sharing programs to exchange the latest updates and ideas on newly-developped assistive applications, screen-reading softwares, androyed and IOS apps Etc.
Along with several regular trainings on ICT, we conduct miscellaneous short-term trainings to help them build their capacity and enable them to compete and explore the world of possibilities and opportunities.
Educational Support Program (ESP)
We are dedicated to provide Stationaries and scholarship support for children who are:
- Disaster-affected, displaced, victims of violence,
- Children who are physically-challenged,
- Children of disabled-parents who can’t afford for their children’s schooling,
Note: we have limited space for such support due to the limited resources we have. We are striving to expand support for more children. The educational support recipiants is supposed to follow the terms and condition set by the criteria of the organization.
Recreational and Cultural Program
As self-sustainibility is our high concern, we occasionally organize cultural program. Evrey year, on the occasion of Dipali, we organize DEusi Bhailo program-a traditional singing and dancing program- to generate funds which we often donate to other organizations, orphanages and youth-led initiatives. In 2013, we donated the raised fund from Bhaili to Nepal Kidney Centre and Nepal Heart Foundation to help them support for the treatments for those who can’t afford.
Similarly, to ensure the recreational rights of persons with disabilities, we organize picnics, gatherings, educational and recreational tours to the various significant locations so that even visually-impaired are able to enjoy the beauty of the nature practicing inclusive and accessible tourism in Nepal.
Apart from the above-stated programs, we launch different creative campaigns and initiatives to seek the attention of people in our programs and activities. Following are the campaigns that we have been launching to amplify our voice in public, media, government and corporate sectors:
Accessibility Matters
This is the campaign which makes people realize the importance of accessibility for persons with special needs and different abilities to enjoy the equal freedom as others.As we strive to create the inclusive society for all, this campaign includes our tireless efforts to organize public-hearing, pressurizing government to make the infrastructures such as public parks, buildings, roads disabled-friendly and accessible for all. To promote this campaign, we write and publish the series of articles in national leading news-papers, blogs, social networks and radio and Television. Also we teach the various issues of accessibility to the people who are not living with disabilities to integrate persons with disabilities in employment, public-participations, decision-making and corporate affairs.
Technology for Change
We firmly believe that technology should be the effective means of social transformation. Hence, we have introduced this campaign to motivate people to be the genuine users of technology, but not the slave of it. Also this campaign encorporates the different activities like:
- Introducing new software programs and hardware equipments, assistive and adaptive appliances used for the persons with special needs,
- Raising the awareness on web-accessibility, usability of softwares and hardwares and effectiveness of different technical aspects so that people can understand the importance of accessible ICT,
- Conducting expo and giving orientation on how blind and visually-impaired use computer, mobile phones, advanced braille sense, digital audio equipments and especial devices etc.
Virtual Volunteers Initiative
We open the doors of our hearts to welcome any request concerning to be a volunteer. This iniative is for any individuals who can be volunteer from any part of the globe.
We will assign them separate jobs virtually as per their geographical situations, time and skills that they possess. As we apply the spirit of inclusive volunteerism, we give the opportunity to any interested friends who would love to contribute something to Nepal through Bright Star Society.
Trash into treasures (Used, but Useful)
We launched this campaign after the earthquake. We collect old clothes, old items and recycle them and donate to the victims who need that most. Things, which are old and used become treasures and useful and help in a great way to make someone’s lives much easier and more comfortable.
Let’s Go!
We, through this campaign, make people with different disabilities engage in recreational and refreshment trip, Journey and Adventure like hiking and exploration of the natural sites.
Make Rights Real
This campaign is the world-recognized universal campaign that we have adopted to endorse disability-rights in Nepal. We advocate for the unhindered participations, representations of persons with disabilities in state-mechanism, civil societies and community-based affairs. “Nothing about us without us” is the central theme of this campaign.
Transition to Transformation
This new campaign we have introduced is an attempt to help people recover from the post-earthquake transition towards transformation. We have applied entrepreneurial approach in making people independent and self-reliant.
As Nepal is now at the post-earthquake transition, we aim at rebuilding Nepal through entrepreneurship development. Sky is limitless, and we are motivating youth to contribute something for the communiby-building process. If we work hard at present, we will have better and prosperous future. The dream of seeing “new Nepal” is not too far if we tirelessly work hard for the betterment of our nation and the generation.