Bhutanese refugees at the Timai camp. A Telegraph picture

Timai camp (Eastern Nepal), Oct. 17: When the 40-something Ambika Dhital came to the refugee camp over a decade ago, pushed out of her Bhutan homeland in the most unceremonious manner, she did not know how to read or write.

Now as the head of sub-sector B-II of the Bhutan Refugee Women?s Forum (BRWF), about 40 km from Kakarvitta on the India-Nepal border in Nepal?s Jhapa district, Dhital is a leader of sorts, who educates women about their capabilities and mobilises them to take up self-reliant schemes.

This, apart from looking after the daily needs of the camp dwellers and acting as a liaison between ?her people? and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the UN agency that maintains all seven camps across Jhapa, where over 1,15,000 Nepali Bhutanese refugees live.

?When we came to the camps 15 years ago, hardly five per cent of us were literate,? says Hemanta Dahal, an activist who has been associated with several women-empowerment programmes. ?In 1998, the literacy rate in women was recorded at 63 per cent.?

A few fairly-educated women like Dahal formed a group and started imparting informal education to the women in the early 90s. ?Bhutanese Refugees Aiding the Victims of Violence (BRAVV) was started under the chairpersonship of Mangala Sharma, in collaboration with Australian Calling for Refugees and the UNHCR. Initially, it was for victims of violence, but later it was extended to all other women,? Dahal said.

Not only learning to read and write, women enrolled themselves on six-month tailoring and weaving courses also. ?My wife got her training there and I got my training from her. We also got a soft loan to buy a sewing machine. Together we run a tailoring shop now,? says a proud Jagannath Adhikary.

While BRAVV looks mainly after training, BRWF initiated support programmes to make women self-reliant. To escape from the clutches of money-lenders, the women have started saving and credit schemes just six months ago. ?A 30-member group has been formed. Every month, women contribute Rs 50 to Rs 100 each to the main corpus. Depending upon their requirement, women members borrow interest-free money from the fund,? Dahal said.

Tailoring schemes have worked fairly well, though a lot remains to be done. However, weaving has failed miserably due to a complete lack of marketing facilities. ?We took up weaving Mathha, the national Bhutanese costume, but there is no place where we can sell them and we are too poor to buy it for ourselves (each Mathha costs about Rs 1,000),? Dahal said.

Interestingly, these people may not have a land to call their own, but in a show of respect to democratic values, they elect the members of the BRWF, through voting, an exercise the camp members religiously undertake every three years.